First post, a friend told me I should share my grocery shopping rule here.

Basically I call it the 10% rule. When I grocery shop, I set the amount that I am going to spend and I very rarely buy any single item that costs more than 10% of the total I plan to spend. For example, if I decide I'm going to spend $70 (the average for my household per week) no single item will be more than $7.

When I have to buy certain higher ticket-price items, like dog food, cat litter, or meat, I divide it up between two weeks. So if I have to spend $14 on a bag of dog food, that's $7 less that I spend the next week, but luckily those expenditures only come up once a month or so. Hopefully this helps someone,