The Huge Benefits of Instacart Grocery Delivery for Working Moms
I’m super excited to partner with Instacart grocery delivery for this post about saving money, time, and sanity. It’s the best thing since sliced bread, plus you get sliced bread. Amazing!
A quick note, I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on links below.
Back in college, we ordered our groceries online because none of my roommates had cars on campus. Looking back on this, I’m happy for my 20-year-old self that my biggest life challenge was carrying too many bags of groceries or missing a Law & Order SVU rerun. Those were simpler times.
15 years and many tubes of under-eye concealer later, my family owns two vehicles and we’re a short drive from the grocery store. We also have two small humans who I genuinely don’t mind bringing to the grocery store sometimes.
Solo. Not both. Both is the stuff stress headaches are made of.
But as my life gets increasingly busier with a full-time job, motherhood, and writing, something had to give. There were just too many things to do and not enough time to do them all well. I realized that I needed a village to help carry the household load so I didn’t go all evil movie villain on my family. For me, stress leads to either tears or crazy eyes and idle threats, and I had already taken out a ransom on my daughter’s stuffed bunny… So it was clearly time.
Instacart Grocery Delivery InstaSavior
On the day of the stuffed bunny ransom debacle, I got an email from above. Or from Texas maybe. Unclear.
But however the email from Instacart grocery delivery got into my mailbox I’m grateful for it.
Real talk, I thought my grocery delivery days were far behind me at this point. I figured you could only get groceries delivered from more expensive stores and that it would cost 4 trillion dollars. Delivered groceries – that’s for fancy people, or college students who don’t appreciate what daycare is going to cost in the future.
Incorrect assumption! Instacart not just for fancy people, although I’m sure fancy people would enjoy it too.
Instead grocery delivery is for busy moms whose laundry mountains and to-do lists are beyond bonkers and who need to check something off their lists fast. It’s for busy dads who literally can’t even and need a helping hand. Instacart is a grocery fairy godmother who doesn’t turn the pumpkins into carriages but delivers them to your doorstep.
The quicker I shopped, the quicker I fell deeply in love.
How Instacart Grocery Delivery Works
Create your account
Input your zip code to see if Instacart grocery delivery is available in your area. If so, set up your account and select your preferred grocery store. For me, this is Market Basket. That’s right, you can get groceries delivered from Market Basket!
When you create the account you can do a free trial for 2 weeks. Then the yearly fee is $149. BUT, if you buy groceries once a week then it’s very, VERY worth it. Read on for why.
Fill Up Your Cart
It’s online shopping. Basically how you and I buy everything else in our lives. #AmazonPrime4Life.
Search for what you want, filter by brand (#StoreBrand4Life), and add to cart. You can even search by coupons which saved me some cash. Hoozah!
Check Your Cart
This was the game changer for me. I went through and added what I needed, but then I edited. How often do I edit my real-life grocery cart? Never. Never ever. Unless one of my kids throws a jar of spaghetti sauce on the ground and edits for me.
With Instacart I could price check against a couple of similar items and remove the more expensive one. And I could do a quick cabinet double check to see if I really need more grape juice. (We did not.) This also GREATLY reduced hangry impulse buys.
Even though there is a slight surcharge on the groceries, on my first Instacart delivery I ended up saving about $50 on my total bill and we got everything we really needed and nothing we didn’t. After over a year of delivery, those savings have consistently continued.
Pay Up
Delivery address, credit card, select your delivery time. And if anything is out of stock or low on stock, Instacart will suggest alternatives that your personal shopper can buy for you instead. Done and done.
Put ‘Em Away
I ordered at 12:30 pm while I ate lunch. Then I went back to work and the Instacart personal shopper was on it for me. I banged out some emails and like magic my groceries were at my door at 3:30pm. Mind BLOWN.
Every time I order groceries with Instacart they have been delivered within 4 hours. Every, single, time! You can even select your time when you check out if you need a later delivery.
The Instacart Grocery Delivery InstaTakeaways
Honestly, grocery delivery through Instacart is a game-changer. For several reasons.
Time
Knowing that I have a kitchen full of groceries already means that I get about 2 hours back on my weekend with my family. Sure the kids don’t mind grocery shopping, but they would rather be at the park. Or eating snacks that are already in my house. And maybe they will even play quietly together and I’ll get to read a book. Dreams!
And guys… you can click one button to add all of the items that you previously ordered to a new order. I buy the same stuff all the time. This efficiency is life-changing.
Money
After over a year in, I can attest that Instacart saves my family money. We only buy what we actually need and we reduce food waste.
RIP so much produce that I previously bought at the store with good intentions. (P.S. The produce we got through Instacart – perfect. Better than I would have picked.)
Plus we’ll utilize coupons that, let’s be honest, I was not clipping.
Sanity
I don’t like to shop. If you like to shop and genuinely enjoy the grocery store, then Instacart grocery delivery may not be for you.
But if you could build a fortress of Amazon prime boxes because your kids outgrow sneakers on a daily basis and ain’t nobody got time for the mall, then this might be up your alley. After my first Instacart order, I could actually feel some stress knots leave my shoulders. Just glorious.
Are you in?
And then comment below so we can nerd out about Instacart grocery delivery together.
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