Grocery Shopping Helper

What is it?

Hi, my name is Dave Cheong. I run a blog about many things including personal development and productivity lifehacks. The "Grocery Shopping Helper" is a very simple one page application I put together in about 30 mins. Given a list of grocery items and their corresponding aisles at the supermarket, this tool will generate a formatted page of all the grocery items you're ever interested in, either sorted alphabetically or by aisle.

See a sample output

Why might I need it?

If you haven't done so already, I suggest having a read of:

http://www.davecheong.com/2006/07/17/grocery-shopping-for-smart-people/

If you are anything like me, you're probably frustrated by the amount of time you spend at the supermarket. I know what that feels like - walking up and down then back and forth. You're never quite sure exactly where the batteries, baking powder, canned fruits etc are kept. I almost believe those sneaky teenage kids move things around just to confuse people like us. ;-)

Well, those days are well and truly behind me. Now, I take a print out of the store's items, sorted by aisle, with a little note alongside the items I'm interested in this week. I start with my trolley at one end and finish at the other. I only need to move round ONCE to pick up everything I need. I estimate, I save about 40% of the time I used to spend grocery shopping. Oh yeah, I also never go home to an angry wife because I forgot the sugar or some other thing.

How do I use it?

Using it can't be any simpler.

  1. Start by making a list of the items you are interested in. Not just the items for this week (like a conventional shopping list), but for ALL the items you are, might be or used to be interested in.
  2. Just for the very first time, go to the store and note down all the aisle numbers against every item you have on your list. Your supermarket customer service might already have a list defined, so ask them first.
  3. Come back to this site and enter each item into the text area below (separate the description from the aisle with a comma).
  4. Generate a report alphabetically by clicking the 'Generate' button. Print it in landscape and stick it on your fridge for future reference. This is a convenient lookup index which you can use to find the aisle by the item description. You only need one of this.
  5. Click the browser's back button. Select the "Sort by aisle" checkbox. Generate a report by aisle and print it in landscape. Unlike the previous report, you should print as many copies of this as possible. You will need one of this every time you go to the grocery store.
  6. At the start of each week, get a fresh aisle report and stick it on your fridge.
  7. Each time you run out of something, say milk, place a mark in your aisle report next to the item indicating the quantity you need. You can use the alphabetical report to look up the aisle number.
  8. Take each weekly aisle report when you go to the shops. Simply walk from one end to the other end of the store (ie from the first to the last aisle) and pick up the items with marks alongside as you go pass them.

That's it. Believe it or not, having a simple map of the grocery store with marks against the items you need saves tons of time. Don't wait any longer. I've already entered a sample list below. You can use that as a starting point. When you're ready, simply click the 'Generate' button.

Details:

Sort by aisle