Do you use Shopping Lists?

Do you use Shopping Lists?

These days, I rarely see people in supermarkets using shopping lists. Whether it’s because they are super smart or just lazy, it’s not really a good idea.
Sure, it’s a good mental exercise, probably keeps the old noodle sharp, etc., but there are some downsides…

It’s hard to transfer your mental list to another person. This means that nine times out of ten you’ll choose to do the shopping yourself, because it’s just easier that way.

The more your spouse, your children or other household members pretend to be hapless and helpless when asked to buy stuff, the less they are likely to be asked. They know it, you know it, but again – it’s easier and faster to ignore this dynamic and just do it yourself.

Even when you do the shopping yourself, if you happen to be stressed, have something else on your mind, etc., you will forget a few things – used to happen to me all the time, until the Dwel’s Shopping app became operational. From then on, I stuck a tablet on my fridge and I’ve been using the Shopping List functionality ever since.

That’s not me in the picture – just FYI. I wish!… But that’s a whole different subject…

Having a touch screen on the fridge door is actually quite cool (no pun intended)! Some of us oldies will remember a movie with Arnie Schwarzenegger, set far in the future, when he takes a carton of milk out of the fridge, and since it’s nearly empty, uses the screen built into the door of the fridge to add milk to the shopping list. This was twenty years ago and had quite the ‘wow!’ factor. But now I do that every day and it’s quite ordinary – I guess we’ve finally caught up with that future, hah? 🙂

I reckon another reason why many people don’t use a shopping list is that it’s not always handy when you need to add stuff to it. You’re probably cooking, or rushing off to work, or something like that – there just isn’t always time to get your phone out, scroll to the app, wait until it loads, type in the item, blah, blah.

This is why having a tablet on the fridge door is so convenient. Mine is constantly on, and set to my Dwel’s home page (if you want to know how to do that – it’s very simple- check out the How to make any fridge Smart).

From the Dwel home page, all I need is to tap one button and type in the first letter of the item that I want to add to the shopping list. I then select it from the autocomplete list and tap ‘Add’. Done! It literally takes four taps and four seconds.

So then, of course, when I’m at the shops, all I need is my trusty phone and – voila – my shopping list, sorted by the shop where I usually buy each item. I generally use three major shops: Woolies (a combined name for either Woolworths or Coles), Aldi, and the local fruit and veg market. Some few items may come from Costco, or the local butcher, or other local shops, but the bulk of my groceries comes from the big three, which all get visited on a regular shopping trip. So having the list sorted by shop is quite handy and prevents any unnecessary back and forth.

Using the Dwel Shopping List in a supermarket

There’s a feature of the Dwel Shopping List that I find sometimes quite useful.
Let’s say I decide in the morning, or the night before, that I’ll be making Green Bean Casserole for dinner (yes, I’m fancy like that ;-)). I’ve got all the ingredients, except the green beans (da!), so, naturally, I put them on the shopping list.
Now the trick is to not forget to get them on the way back from work – last thing anyone wants after a long day is to have to go back out to the shops. So as I add the green beans to the shopping list, I set a due date on the item to today (the current date). Normally, there’s no need to set a due date, but in this case it’s handy.

Setting the due date to the current date puts a red reminder bubble on the home page,

which makes it harder to forget, because red notification bubbles in Dwel are like warning beacons – wherever you see one, you know it’s something important.

Throughout the day, as I use other Dwel functions, I’ll be catching a glimpse of the red bubble on the Shopping icon on the home page, which will keep reminding me that I have something important to buy.

Plus there’s the added benefit of other household members perhaps noticing the reminder, and perhaps caring enough to buy the item, should they happen to be in the shops or nearby.
Of course, that hasn’t ever happen for me, but I’m an optimist – some day it will! Some day… Maybe…