Every time I take the kids to the store, they always want to buy everything they see. This drives me crazy.
This made me wonder what would happen if I just let them get whatever they want? How many items would they throw in the cart, what types of items ? How much extra would it cost me? The next time we went to the store, I performed an experiment. I didn't say anything if they threw something extra in the cart. I just let them do it.
Here are the items we went to buy. I only had four items I needed.
This is what our cart looked like when we were half way done with shopping.
This is what it looked like when I finally told them to stop (after I got the last of the four items on our list). Below are the stats of this experiment.
Additional Items They Added: 79
Extra Amount It Would Have Cost Me If I Purchased It All: $207.38
( I figure, if I bought them everything they wanted, every time we go to the store, it would cost me an extra $10,783.76 each year. )
Items They Got:
Twinkies
Balloons
Jello
Baking Cocoa
Scooby Doo Graham Cracker Snacks
Pretzels
Cookie mix
Cake Sprinkles
Pull ups
Pez dispensers
Toilet paper
Plastic plates
Paper plates
Birthday candles
Colored marshmallows
Pudding cups
Cheeze-Its
I, obviously, did not buy everything they threw in the cart, but I did let them buy a few of them. They were VERY excited about this.
McCann got jovial and started dancing in the aisle while saying, "It's like my birthday!"
We had to put most of the items back, but we had fun doing it.
And more fun.
On the right are the items that were on our list. On the left are the extra items I bought them - way scaled down from the cart full in the store. Glad I didn't by it all. I would have gone bankrupt.
Cherry Lane Diaries 