Shopping List

When it comes to getting things done, few tricks work as well as a good shopping list. If you go to the supermarket with no list, if you wander the aisles trying to decide what to get, shopping takes forever, and when you get home, you’ve forgotten the important stuff, like beer.

The most simple shopping list, one cobbled together the morning of shopping day, helps but there are better. A good way to get started is to magnetically attach paper to the refrigerator. Look around and you can find pencils with little magnets that you can attach next to the list. When you think of something you need, stop for a second and add it to the list. By the end of the week, your shopping list has most, if not all the things you need.

I like something even more efficient. When it comes to supermarkets, the less time spent under their roofs, the better. Supermarkets seem to have the worst lighting in the world? Through the automatic doors, glows a world generated by bright, white, fluorescent tubes. Unnatural rays beat on your head and shoulders like some subtle radioactive bombardment and artificially shift color to glaring states of ugly. Brightly colored boxes look like they’ve been sun faded. People appear sickly, pores showing where pores should not show; this while I’m selecting food! I think stores know the light irritates. Most use different lights in the produce department; probably because the main lights make veggies look old. No, I do not like spending any more time under those hideous lights than I have to; I need a fast shopping list.

My list works like this: I map my route though the store like a rally race. Stores vary, so your route may be different, but mine is as follows: Bakery, Produce, Meat, Cheese, Milk and eggs, Frozen food, Frozen juice, Water, Household stuff, Coffee/tea, Pasta, Rice/beans, Baking goods, Canned vegetables, Cereal, Paper products, Vitamins/cosmetics…Liquor store. Using a spreadsheet program, the above list become category headings. Under each heading, 4 or 7 rows are left blank for items. This map gets stuck to the refrigerator door. During the week as menus are planned or essentials go thin, items are added under the appropriate heading. When I hit the supermarket, I dash around the perimeter, up and down a few aisles and, wham bam, to the check out. Minimize the the time in the market and spend more cooking. Wa hoo.

copyright 2005 Chromia Poetics