The shopping, without thinking about it three times over

Shopping rarely costs you time at the shop. It costs time beforehand — deciding what to eat, remembering what’s missing — and afterwards, when you go back for the two things you forgot.

Three meals, not seven

Planning a whole week of meals is an exercise that’s appealing on Sunday and collapses on Wednesday, when you get home late and fancy absolutely none of what was planned. Three decided meals are enough: the ones on the evenings you know will be difficult.

The other evenings get improvised with whatever’s there — and that’s exactly what empties the fridge instead of filling it with things that end up thrown away.

The list fills up over the course of the week

The right moment to write down “olive oil” isn’t in front of the shelf, or on your way out: it’s when you finish the bottle. It’s the only moment you actually know.

That only works if the list can be opened in two taps, otherwise you won’t bother. A pinned note, reopened all week and emptied at the shop, does exactly that job. A shopping list doesn’t need to be a task — it has no date, no time, it just gets ticked off once a week.

Two columns beat sorting by aisle

Sorting the list by aisle saves five minutes in the shop and costs five minutes to write. What actually helps is cruder than that: what you absolutely need, and what would be nice to have. On the day you’re in a rush, you know what you can skip.

What comes back every week

Keep the same note from one week to the next rather than starting a new one. The lines that keep coming back (bread, coffee, eggs) stay written; you just untick them at the start of the week. It’s less elegant than a list template, and a lot faster.

And if you shop online, the note still earns its keep: it’s what you read while filling the basket, and it holds the things the shop’s algorithm will never suggest to you.

Common questions