Clutter Video Tip: Managing Grocery Shopping Lists

http://www.clutterdiet.com Get organized with home organizing tips from professional organizers at The Clutter Diet. The links on the video are http://tinyurl.com/menupad and http://tinyurl.com/grocerypad . Are you making your list and checking it twice? It is so frustrating to get home from the grocery store and realize you have forgotten something you needed. It's even more frustrating if that item was on your shopping list. Today Lorie Marrero reviews all sorts of shopping list methods- ranging from improving the old standby pen and paper to the new smart phone apps. You might feel a little naughty following this advice, because your trips down the aisles will be so much more productive and efficient. Now won't that be nice? These Clutter Video Tips are posted frequently here on our clutterdiet organizing channel. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie also serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement.

Transcript:
Hi, I'm Lorie Marrero and today's Clutter Video Tip is about grocery lists. We all know how important it is to use a list if you want to save time and save money when you're grocery shopping. So the best, most simple method of all really is just a piece of paper, right? So as long as you have a pen and it's in a consistent place, and your family knows to write things down as they occur, that is the easiest (POP) method of all. I would like to suggest a little improvement on that, and that is what I call the Quadrant Method. So you have a regular piece of paper, it can be scratch paper, anything, you just write two lines on it to create sections, four different sections, one for produce, one for dry goods, one for cold items, and one for other; that might be health and beauty products or paper goods. And then, when items occur to you, you just write them down in the correct quadrant, so that when you are physically in that section of the store, you can easily see that you have already gotten all of those items in that section, and you won't have to back-track quite so much across the store. Another way to do this is a pre-printed list. We sell these in our store, this one's called the All out of Shopping List, and it is magnetic as you can see, and it has a list of the commonly used items that (POP) most families would need. This is not only good for just quickly circling things as they occur to you, but also as a memory jogger, because sometimes you might forget to write things down, and this way you can just be quickly reminded (POP) of anything else you might need while you're going to the store. You can make your own pre-printed list by creating a Word document on your computer, and printing it out on scratch paper or whatever works for you, and that's easily compiled by saving some of your grocery receipts (POP) for a few weeks and making your own customized list for your family, so that's another option too. And finally, we have digital nowadays, this is really fun if you're very into your iPhone or your Android Smart Phone, there are a lot of apps nowadays (POP) that can help you with grocery list management, and I've got those here on the screen for you. Some of them work with text messaging, some of them just work as an app, and you can see which of these would work best for you.

So if you need help managing your menu planning and your grocery shopping, our team of organizing experts is available online to help our members seven days a week in our Message Board area. You can find out more about how this works at clutterdiet.com/learnmore.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

Category:

Howto & Style

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[clutterdiet]

I just edited the description above to have the links in there. I tried them and they both worked just fine...? Sorry you had trouble.

[phoenixrises1845]

great idea the quadrant method. another great idea is listing items according to aisles. i immediately go to aisles with items i need and ignore aisles with items i dont need!

[desPnunn]

My fiance and I each have a Blackberry. I created a Blackberry Messenger group for just the two of us, which allows us to share info like our calendar, photos, and lists. We have a shared grocery list and it's really helped us both stay on top of the shopping. Previously, we often forgot the list when shopping, but we always have our phones. If one of us finds ourselves at a store we can easily check to see what we need, and any time we think of something we can simply add it immediately.

[CaRose]

The links worked! The difference was I was typing in the url myself -- obviously I was doing something wrong. Thanks! :)

[CaRose]

The url for those forms just took me to a spam site.  What is the correct url?

[brandyjuly]

I took the time to use old grocery lists and do an aisle by aisle list as a Word Document years ago and it has saved me TONS of time! I can talk on the phone or wrangle my two busy boys without forgetting things or backtracking a bunch of times! Totally worth the time and effort!!!

[SaneSpaces]

Love the categories of Cold, Dry, Produce and Other!

[CaublasianMom]

Thank you so much for all of the tips. My life feels so much more manageable when I follow your advice!