Organizing Your Shopping Trips

I am constantly asked how I organize my shopping trips. And there is some planning that goes into them. With 5 kids at home I want to get the most out of every trip, so I break up my trips by stores and transactions to accomplish the most on one outing.

I start by making list. I have two kinds of list, my needs list and my store specific lists.
Store Specific: I make a shopping list for each store that I plan on visiting. Each list contains only the items that are on sale for a great price or stockpiling items. That way I know exactly what I need when I go in so I can get in and out very quickly. If I have a lot of qs for an item that is on sale, I will break my trip up into several transactions to ensure that all of my coupons double or triple and I reach the maximum amount of savings.
Needs List: This is a list that I make through out the week with things that we need and that I am going to have to buy somewhere. I take the list with me to all of the specific stores and try to note their prices on these items, I then take my list to Wal-Mart. I generally buy most of the items on my list at Wal-Mart unless it is on sale else where.

I arrange my shopping trip so that I shop at the store with the most cold items last. I keep meaning to bring a cooler with me and the better I get at this the greater the need for the cooler. I will also make my husband or niece do separate transactions if they are shopping with me to allow me to speed my shopping along.