I think you’ll all agree when I say that paperwork is one of the biggest clutter culprits in most homes. ‘Going paperless’ is a semi-regular series on eliminating paper from your home in order to save time, reduce clutter and benefit the environment.
Step 2: Digitising
This series is definitely not about me telling you how I’ve got everything under control (I don’t) or that there aren’t piles of paperwork around my house (there are). It’s about me sharing how I tackle the paper monster that we all face.
I say this because going through this process with you has prompted me to make some changes to my own systems. Only a few weeks ago I wrote about my meal planning strategy and how I use a paper shopping list template that I created myself.
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Since then, we’ve switched to a mobile app. I chose one called MyGroceries, because of two main reasons: it’s cross-platform (that’s The Man’s iPhone on the left and my Samsung on the right) and because you can share lists between more than one user (we both do the shopping).
Image may be NSFW.
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We’ve split it up into different shops for the groceries, such as supermarket, butcher, greengrocer and Asian grocer. We’re both loving the fact that we can pop something on the list whenever we remember it, rather than forgetting about it by the time we’re next in the kitchen with a pen.
I’ve also added custom lists such as hardware store, bottle shop, craft store and errands. This is especially good for non-urgent items, like when I’ve used the last of the Mod Podge but don’t need it for anything right now, but next time I’m at Spotlight I want to remember to pick some up. Anything to avoid getting home and having that annoying ‘Oh sod, I should have remembered to get x while I was there, now I have to do another trip!’ moment right?
The only issue is that the supermarket categories are in alphabetical order rather than the aisle order, but this should be easy to fix by numbering the aisles.
Has technology changed the way you do your shopping?
