I’m a paper and pen sorta gal, but back when I was pregnant with our youngest, the hubbs took over a lot of the care of the house as I was so sick and exhausted. Back then he was not a paper and pen sorta guy at ALL! He quickly started looking for apps to transfer all my lists to. At that point we had just one iPad and one Kindle, so we needed apps that would “talk” to each other. Honestly, he did a good job at finding some great apps. We still use most of them today to some degree. But my favorite app, and the one I have never transferred back to pen and paper, is our grocery list. Seriously, it’s the bees knees!
The app is called “Our Groceries”. On the home screen you have a list of the stores and when you click on the store it gives you the list for that store. You can also easily move items between lists. Too simple, right?
Here are some of the ways we work our lists…
~ Stores - We keep a list for each of the stores we shop at (Costco, Sams, King Soopers, etc.)
~ Wish lists - Each family member has a wish list that we add too and when it’s birthday or Christmas we have an instant gift list!
~ Firehouse - This list is for the hubby to be able to grocery shop at the firehouse without getting those items mixed up with our family grocery list
~ Boys need - I keep a running list of what clothing, etc. the boys are going to need coming up. That way when I’m out and either run across clearance or I’m at Kohls and drawing a blank, I can just look up how many t-shirts and what size they need
~ doTerra - I keep a list of what oils we are getting low on and what I’ll need to order soon
~ RX’s - Because prescriptions and supplements are such a huge part of our lives and with how many we have, it can be a mess keeping track of it all. Whenever we get low on an item I just add it to the list so that when I place an order I don’t miss anything
~ Pen and ink - Ok, this might sound ridiculous, but I keep a list of all the pens and inks I am interested in. It makes a great gift list for me too ;) I’m going to have to add a second list to this soon as my oldest is really into fine pens right now too. He already has 2 fountain pens and a dip pen and is begging for more - I may have created my own little Frankensteins monster! You could change this to be a list for any hobby you are in to. Come to think of it, I really should make a yarn list… And a pattern list…. And….
~ Items needed soon - This is actually my favorite list. Not because of what’s on it, but because of how much it has helped keep me organized and within budget. Every time I see that we are running low on something, I add it to this list. When shopping day arrives I can easily see what staples we will need soon. I usually choose 2 to 6 items (depending on the budget that week) to move to the appropriate store list. I don’t run out of staples anymore and I don’t have to buy 30 items in one week because we are out of everything at once and completely blow the budget.
On the day I plan the menu, I add all the ingredients we will need for each meal to the store list I plan to buy it at. I then choose a handful of staples / items we need soon to max out the budget for that week. Now that both my husband and I have iPhones, the shopping goes really fast. We’ll start at the first store, each with our phones and start getting items. As one of us checks it off the list it will update to the others phone so we can quickly move through the store. When we get in the car, I will move anything we didn’t get to the list for the next store. This process has made shopping day much less stressful and a lot shorter of a day.
Another reason I love this app is if we ever stop somewhere unexpectedly, I’ve always got my shopping list with me. It has eliminated so many extra trips to the store because I forgot what was on my list sitting at home. Hubby loves it because there are no more little scraps of paper lying around with my shopping lists on them, ok, I love that reason too!
