Aldi!

I love this store! I go so infrequently that I sometimes forget how much I love it. Today however, I realized that we were running low on many of the things that we normally purchase there, so I decided to stop by and ended up spending $125...yikes!When we lived in Maryland, we had an Aldi that was about 20 minutes from our house and in a really bad part of town. Because of these two factors, Pat and I would go together (too scary to go by myself and definitely not with Sophie) 2-3 times a year and stock up. When we moved to Ohio, we were so thirlled to discover an Aldi no more than 2 miles from home in an area that we regularly shop and feel safe in! We have only been three times in the 10 months that we have lived here, but I need to remind myself to go back more regularly so that it's not such a high bill each time.

Here are a few things about Aldi, if you are not familiar with it:

1. You have to have quarter on hand to get a cart. (Don't worry, you get it back when you return your cart.)

2. It reminds me a lot of a grocery outlet(if you know what that is), except that it is not damaged or expired goods. They actually have their own brands-basically a store full of generics(probably not the place for you if you are particular about your brands.)

3. They do sell some name brand stuff, toys, clothes, really just about anything you can imagine, but mostly food. I even saw treadmills and hockey tables in there today.

4. Although most of the items they sell, they have on hand most of the time, sometimes it is hit or miss and you never quite know what you will find!((kind of exciting)

5.As far as food goes, they sell everything from can goods to fresh vegetables to fresh meat and poultry to frozen foods. Although I'm sure it is fine, we have not ventured to try the fresh meat yet.

6. They also have a line of light and fit choices, which I quite enjoy. Today they had several varieties of dried fruit for a very reasonable price!

7. Sometimes, if you hit the store at a busy time (weekends or evenings) it kind of feels like everybody is just grabbing everything they can get their hands on and it can get quite intense. Morning hours are usually good.

8. You have to pay with cash or debit.

9. They don't bag your food for you, but they have great, sturdy bags that you can pay 10-15 cents for and reuse them to bag your own food.

10. It is a great store for stocking up on things that you use frequently or for your food storage. Some of the things that we always buy are: condensed soups, canned vegetables, pretzels, condiments...really the list goes on and on...