Grocery List Efficiency

Yesterday a friend showed me a new gadget for grocery shopping. It's a SmartShopper Grocery List Organizer. I thought this was hilarious at first. There really is a gadget for everything. Some people love their gadgets. Although I have to admin, I'm a pretty big kitchen gadget gal myself but I am learning that no matter how big the kitchen, you can't have everything and there are a lot of good multi-purpose gadgets out there so I like to maximize my space and spending by only buying things if I really need them or if they can do more than one thing.

For people with severe arthritis or any other type of condition that makes writing difficult, these new electronic list keepers are a real god sent. Call me old fashioned but I use paper and a pen to do my lists. And I do a lot of lists. Now some may say, electronic lists save trees. True but a lot of electronic parts are hard to safely dispose of. In the future there are federal acts to ensure electronic equipment is made without some of the harmful parts so there is hope. In the meantime I use the old pages from my 'quote-a-day' calendar.

This gadget does something that both my friend and I agree is a necessity for efficient grocery shopping and general sanity. It organizes the list for you by category. That is the most important thing you can do before hitting the grocery store. Organize your list! I rewrite mine and have different areas of the page for different sections of the grocery store, top left is always fresh fruit and veggies, under that is shelf items, bottom left is household items, top right is meats, bottom right is dairy. But if you don't want to waste time and paper, pull out the highlighter set. Go through your list and highlight all the items in the dairy section in one colour, use another colour for the freezer section, another for meats, another for fresh items, another for items on the shelves, etc. You get the idea. Don't have highlighters in the house? Crayons will work too! Then when you get the the store, don't leave a section until you have all the items of that colour group. Easy!