An improved grocery list
June 11, 2019
Here's how it's usually been when we've shopped groceries:
- It's sunday, we should really figure out what to eat for the next few days, a shopping list is written - Ida (my girlfriend) is really good at this!
- Ida or I goes shopping. Note: The following is the experience when I am the person who goes shopping.
- The list is overwhelming, things are not ordered in a clever way (how did this happen? we tried our best), I forgot a pen to mark the things I already grabbed, better try to remember, it's already been 20 minutes! I still miss two things... finally! done!
- Home. In the meantime Ida found out that we ran out of dipers, and I forgot to buy tomatoes.
Even though it's been working out fine for years, I decided a few weeks ago that it was time to try to improve the flow.
And since I'm ignorant about all other solutions already invented by other people, behold!:
The improved grocery list
Features:
- Colors: Pleasing on the eyes
- Categories: Add stuff to the correct category as you run out of it, don't worry about order anymore
- Categories again: Buy all the stuff one category at a time, cleverly ordered, the same every time
- Categories again again: Rip categories from the sides as you are done with them, no need to bring a pen
So far it's been a noticable improvement. Yesterday I went shopping, tired after a long day, not the best of moods, my 10 months old son crying in the car all the way to the mall, and then I bought all this:
And I was only cranky for the first few minutes!
Only problem is having to print and cut out more of them every once in a while. Time will tell if it the printing/cutting effort outweighs the cool features.
Download the list (six lists per A4 sheet) as pdf and start shopping for cool nordic stuff like brød, grønt, kød or pålæg... or download the list as svg and invent your own exotic words, or just translate it to your language.
The tools: I made the list with one of my favorite open source utilities: Inkscape. I especially love the path editing tools! - Though I didn't use them much this time.