The quick answer: Use a shopping list to bring order to your life and reduce the chaos—so you have time and energy for life's random delights.
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Order and Chaos
Remember the second time you kissed your dearly beloved? The first kiss might have been a cautious and tentative venture—an impulsive foray into the unknown. The second kiss likely followed the first by a fraction of a second but with a lot more, well, gusto. Life is like that. Sometimes it’s planned with small, predictable pleasures. But other times we’re caught unawares and carried away to wondrous places. Know what I mean?
In the well-lived life we enjoy both: predictable order and spontaneous joy. Isn’t this the trick in balancing our lives—to gain the daily benefits of order, yet also be open that “path less traveled”? I remember the weekday grind of school, homework, and work as a teenager, then the sweet and spontaneous chemistry that just might happen at our Saturday night dances. Remember that night you didn’t want the music to ever end?
Sorry to interrupt your reverie, but this post is about the benefits of a menu-based shopping list. The menu and shopping list are two key ways of organizing life and freeing you up for those crazy, unplanned Saturday-night-dance delights.
Shopping Lists
Here's a link to a shopping list if you go to several stores (like Costco, a grocery store, and a farmers market or health foods store). Or if you prefer a list that includes space for menu writing, visit our daughter's blog inchmark. In a post the grocery list, she shared her approach to meal planning and provided a link to her editable list. You may be using an iPhone app for a list but if you don’t have a list you like, you’re welcome to try one of these.
A menu-based shopping list brings big benefits:
#1: A shopping list is a plan—an antidote to wandering the store aisles wondering what to eat, susceptible to the worst offerings of Food Inc.
#2: A shopping list saves money—healthy food really is cheaper than the modern American diet, if you take a thoughtful approach to planning.
#3: A shopping list saves time—it’s your best way to minimize grocery store runs and streamline meal preparation.
#4: A shopping list reduces stress—how many times have you been in that last-minute squeeze to come up with an idea for dinner?
#5: A shopping list lets you teach—your family can’t learn by helping if the plan is all in your head.
Please comment: How do you organize grocery shopping? Got an app for your iPhone? Use a printed list you keep in the pantry during the week? What works best for you? Please share.