neverhomemaker: What I HATE About Aldi

I've gone on and on and on about how much I love Aldi. The store has helped to cut our grocery budget overall pretty dramatically. I can still tell a big difference when I decide to shop at Wegmans due to convenience or laziness. But I'm having some new thoughts on the topic I thought were worth sharing. I still love Aldi, but there's one aspect of shopping there that I have grown to hate. It has to do with my own self control BUT Aldi is enabling my behavior!

When I first started shopping at the store, I mostly skipped over the freezer section. I even ignored many packaged foods because they only looked OK. None of it was hugely attractive to me. Slowly a few more prepared items and packaged foods trickled in that were organic and really good looking. And in the last year (or a little longer), the freezer and refrigerated section (CHEESE!) has expanded. The snacked have seen a boost, too. There are now a multitude of interesting vegetarian and vegan options, as well as some more general foods that -- to me -- are just too tasty to pass up.

This, on the whole, is an excellent thing.

BUT: I was never much of a packaged foods shopper. In fact, I used to make much of our food from scratch. Slowly (and because of better affordability compared to other stores), I've put things in my cart. A bag of veggie chips here, a box of root vegetable hash browns there, some interesting sauces, mac-and-cheese thin crust pizzas . . . and then I'd notice "limited time" buys that I just HAD TO HAVE BEFORE THEY WENT AWAY FOR GOOD.

So, I'd stock up.

I also joined some Aldi Facebook groups. There's a cult-like following on there, right? Every time there's a new or exciting product, someone would post about it. Others would quickly chime in about how AMAZING it was. And I'd find myself with tons of new things on my shopping list.

After a while, my stand-up freezer was full. My pantry is teeming with packaged items. I'd stopped making my own hummus. I started buying things I never used to buy in packages (granola bars) because I got so out of the habit of cooking and baking from scratch. And my grocery bill wasn't hugely increased. I mean, it went up -- but because I wasn't making anything on my own, I wasn't buying raw ingredients much.

What was happening? Well, our trash and recycling output has gone up quite a bit. (I'm not zero waste, but I don't like this much waste.) We're not eating as many fruits and veggies as I'd like. My kids are preferring packaged foods to whole foods. I've gained some weight. I increased our weekly grocery budget $25 a week (adds up).

The list goes on . . .

YES. Some convenience foods are a necessary evil for that stage of life I'm in. (I know some people would argue not.) I don't have glorious hours upon hours to spend in the kitchen toiling over homemade crackers. At the same time, my family should really be eating more whole foods. I'll admit that it's a heck of a lot easier to just tell my kids to grab something themselves than to cut veggies and serve it to them.

So, what I hate about Aldi is that I once saved money due to the store being so almost painfully streamlined. I'm now falling into the traps I fell into at other grocery stores because of all the temptations. I am absolutely thrilled that Aldi has so many wonderful and affordable options, especially for vegetarians and vegans, but I now find myself with some work ahead of me to get in better balance.

This all said, I will share some of my favorite foods that I have found with you soon on Instagram. I'm not going to stop buying all the things entirely. But instead of having everything every week, I may treat these items more as treats or weekend special foods. We'll see.