Awesome. The first time is the hardest.

As far as the details, you may find that just using a pair of panniers does the trick for you. I did that for decades. I now have very large metal baskets on the rear of my town bike and a mid-sized front basket. I rarely find that I can't fit everything in the baskets, on top of them or on bags that are bungeed on to them. When I go in for a big shopping expedition, I've got a very large flat-bed trailer that does the trick up to about 700 pounds, which is about my physical limit as well.