Making More Time for Baseball with Sam’s Club Pickup

Thanks to Sam’s Club for sponsoring this post, Making More Time for Baseball with Sam’s Club Pickup. Opinions are based upon my experiences.

In our family, spring means one thing.

Baseball season!

And once hits, evenings become spent running to practices and games. Saturdays too.

Work and school during the day. Then do homework. Go to game or practice. Come home and get cleaned up and go to bed.

Repeat.

Which leaves a lot less time for getting anything done that needs to get done. And if I do manage to make time for the things that need to get done, then other things suffer. Like spending time with my kids. And making healthier food choices. Hello, concession stand and fast food.

It’s really tough having to choose spending time with my kids or spending time at the grocery store. Healthy meals and snacks vs quality time is a choice no parent should have to make.

Which is why I was super excited to try out Sam’s Club Pickup service.

Sam’s Club’s Club Pickup helps you save time because you place your order on your computer or mobile device and then pick it up in store. They pretty much do your shopping for you, you just have to get it home.

Make sure you keep reading, I’m going to share my Sam’s Club Pickup experience with you and share with you a way that you can get a $20 Sam’s Club gift card and a $20 Instant Savings Book when you purchase a Sam’s Club membership.

I was able to do my shopping using the app on my phone while I was waiting for my son’s game to start or while I was making dinner. It’s super convenient. You don’t have to do it all at once either so as things popped up I added them to my cart. Once I was ready to checkout, it was easy to schedule the pickup. They let you choose a day and a time period for pickup. you can pay online or in-store. I figured I would save time by doing it ahead of time.

The day my order was ready, I received a notification from the app and a text message telling me that my order was ready. As I arrived in the store parking lot, the app knew I was nearby (I had to ensure location services were turned on) and reminded me to check in when I was ready to pickup my order.

The app gives you the option to let the store know if you are ready to pick-up or if you plan on doing a bit of shopping first. Since I needed to get in and out, I clicked that I was ready to check in and get my order right away. You can also use the in-store kiosk to check in to pickup your order.

You can’t miss the pickup area! it was near the front of the store by the membership area.

Since I had already checked in, I expected them to be ready for me and have my order pulled, but they asked my my name and had to sort through a pile of papers to find my order. Since I had a cooler item, one person went to the cooler to retrieve it, the other went to get the rest of my order. I wasn’t really sure what to do at that point, they didn’t communicate with me, just each other and sort of disappeared.

The one woman returned with my cooler item and set it on the counter and after a couple of minutes I heard my name and had to walk through the checkout area to get my cart (after grabbing my cooler item off the counter). By the time I got to the cart, the woman had let but returned with my receipt after a few seconds. I expected her to walk through the receipt to make sure all of my items were there, but she did not.

After being in the store for about 8-10 minutes, I made my way to my van and loaded up my items. Most of what I needed were drinks and snacks for baseball but I also needed a few other things and have been eye-balling that tiered basket for awhile and decided to pick it up. Now I can keep my kids away from the concession stand and know they are making better choices!

Normally a trip to Sam’s Club takes me 60-90 minutes to get through the store. Right now, that’s 60-90 minutes I wouldn’t be spending with my kids, so the 10 minutes I spent was a very welcome change, even though I expected it to be a little more streamlined.

Now, I can spend that time playing baseball with my son. It’s a sport we both love but I never get enough time to just toss a ball around with him. In fact, it feels like years since I’ve done it. He’s getting older and wants to play high school ball which means he needs to spend every day practicing and improving.

It was really nice to be able to get outside and know that my shopping was done.

I can’t believe how strong he has gotten and how much harder he can throw it now.

I need to work on my flexibility a little bit, ouch!

But it felt so good to get out there with him.

For me, connecting with my teenager is important, and being able to relate to him doing something he loves is a great way to spend quality time together. And it makes me even more proud to sit and watch his games knowing that I invested time in him and his talents. See that kid pitching in the photo below? That’s mine! He struck that player out.

What would you have time for if you used Sam’s Club Pickup? What one thing would you do with an extra 60-90 minutes?

• For more information visit: Sam’s Club’s Club Pickup.
• To take advantage of the $20 gift card plus $20 Instant Savings visit: Sam’s Club membership promo.