If you ever wrote a high school or college term paper, you probably remember the numerous hours spent researching, organizing, and writing.

Before you turned in the labor of your hard work, you probably took some time to sit back and edit what you wrote – removing unnecessary words, deleting sentences, and taking out paragraphs that didn’t make sense.

To save money at the grocery store you can use this very same principle. Simply edit out unnecessary purchases in your shopping cart before moving to the check-out counter.

When you enter the grocery store you’re bombarded by a number of offers, sales messages, and so called bargains. Supermarkets purposefully do this in order to overload your senses in the hopes that you’ll buy more than you need.

Additionally, your emotions can overwhelm sound shopping decisions. When you’re sad or upset, for example, you tend to buy more. When you’re hungry you tend to purchase more as well.

As a result, we can make poor decisions when we place items into our shopping carts. This is where editing your shopping cart becomes important, but is seldom done. Editing involves simply reviewing the contents in your shopping cart and removing those items you really don’t need.

Do you really need that expensive Haagen-Dazs ice cream or did you place it in your cart because you were feeling lousy?

Are you really going to make that special recipe that requires those expensive bottles of spices?

The sales sign said 5 cans of beans for $5, but do you really need 5? In most cases you’ll still get the sale price if you only buy 3 or 4 cans.

What about that magazine you picked up because of the interesting article – can’t you read the same article on the magazine’s website?

How about that hair dye, it’s probably much cheaper at Target.

Realize that there’s no rule that says once you put something in your shopping cart you can’t take it back out. By taking a few minutes to calmly edit your grocery cart you reduce unnecessary or unnecessarily expensive purchases. This can literally save you hundreds of dollars every single year!

I noticed something funny when I entered my local Dominick’s supermarket a month ago. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it quickly hit me – my grocery cart had been SUPER-SIZED!

Literally overnight all of the smaller grocery carts had been replaced with these new shiny behemoths on wheels. And yes they are more difficult to use – its easier for people to hog aisles and more difficult to navigate the tight corners of the produce department.

So why were these new shopping carts installed? Well to be sure it wasn’t for my convenience. More likely its to increase supermarket profits.

Grocery stores have found that customers simply spend more when they use larger shopping carts!

I’m not exactly sure of the reason. Perhaps a full cart acts as a crude warning gauge, reminding us when its time to wrap up our shopping. Since it takes longer to fill a larger cart, the warning gauge goes off much later.

Or perhaps, a larger grocery cart seems less full when it contains the same amount of products as a smaller cart. Because it seems less full, we subconsciously feel that we can put more goods in it – in much the same way we put extra trash in a larger trash bag or stuff more clothes in a larger suitcase.

Whatever the reason we spend more when our grocery carts are larger, expect more and more stores to place larger and larger shopping carts in front of us. Even department stores are getting into the act by providing shopping carts.

The worst thing about my super-sized shopping cart experience is that over the past few weeks I’ve actually become accustomed to larger shopping carts. No longer do they feel like massive behemoths. So will I fall into the trap? Will I succumb to the tendency to buy more because of a larger shopping cart? Only time will tell.