Make Grocery Shopping a Snap by Employing This Simple Rule – USE IT UP, WRITE IT DOWN!

Eat Food? Buy Groceries? Suffer from Time Poverty?

Me too! – Here is a refrigerator trick to make shopping a snap.

You need only invest seconds to gain minutes, a pretty good return on your investment.

Here is how it works. At our house when we use up the last of a food item we immediately write down the item on a paper pad that is magnetized to the side of the refrigerator. We have a pen that sits alongside the tablet so it literally take less time to add an item to the list than it does to throw away or recycle the empty container of sour cream or whatever was consumed. If we pack the last banana for lunch, we immediately write it down on the fridge pad. If we didn’t like something and we’re unlikely to repurchase we don’t bother writing it down. But, for food, kitty litter, light bulbs and whatever else we use up – we write down.

This little trick saves us time preparing to go to the store and eliminates forgetting items once at the store. It also enables us to grab the list at any moment for an impromptu trip to the store. We’ll even walk to the neighborhood store to pick up a few items that are more prone to carrying, leaving the larger items for our next driving trip to Costco.

There are several ways you can get started with your improved grocery listing. The bottom line is you need an accessible pad and pen. Maybe this sits on your fridge as mine does. Maybe yours sits on a desk nearby. The point is you have a pad available, then you use it as you deplete items from your refrigerator or pantry, making life a little bit easier.

Here is a photo of my fridge pad with a very handy floppy magnetic pen. The pad was something I picked up at Hallmark and the pen is an item they have at Storables, near the cash register at my store. Lame that they don’t have a web site where you can purchase. You could also glue a magnet on whatever pad you like or use a magnetic clip to hold the pad or pen. There are many ways to accomplish the same thing.


Whether you buy a pad or make one out of stuff laying around the house, the point is to do something. I promise you will save time, make your next trip to the grocery store a bit easier and make living a little bit better.