grocery shopping yesterday

[hudebnik]

We haven't been wearing masks to walk the dogs, since the population density is low enough in our neighborhood that staying 6 feet away from other people is easy, especially when one is walking two large dogs. So my newly-made face mask made its debut at the grocery store yesterday. This was the first time I've had to stand in line to get into the store, and people were dutifully standing ~6 feet apart in line. Fortunately, this particular store has a bunch of produce bins outdoors, so I was able to pick up some things on the list (grapefruit, lemons, limes, avocados) while waiting to get inside.

Inside the store, I think everybody was masked. Most shelves were reasonably stocked, although hand soap was skimpy, and I wasn't able to get exactly the kind of flour I was looking for, or exactly the kind of breakfast cereal I was looking for. Oh, yeah: cheese was pretty scarce, and I didn't get any. Butter, cream, yogurt, and milk were all fine.

The mask is pretty comfortable, but it does produce a certain amount of glasses-fogging, which makes it hard to read the shopping list on my phone.

Speaking of which, we each got an e-mail a few weeks ago from our shopping-list-app provider, Wunderlist, saying they'd been bought out and the app would shortly cease to work. Anybody have recommendations for a shopping-list app? Cloud-based family sharing is important. Easy re-use of previously-added-and-checked-off items is important. Automatic categorization is a nice touch: Wunderlist didn't have it, but the one I tried yesterday, AnyList, does and I can see how it could be useful. Free is nice but not essential.

Comments

[hlinspjalda]

We use Google's Keep app for shared shopping lists and many other ad hoc purposes -- camping packing lists, project notes, etc.

I have Google choked to a minimum: no calendar, no location services, etc.

[ilaine]

I also went yesterday, early AM. Clearly not the same place as no external bins. It was more crowded than the same store at the same time the prior two weeks, and I also had to wait on line for the first time. Some produce was not to be had - potatoes, some other things. Plenty of pineapples if one wanted them which I didn't. I couldn't get the ham I wanted, will try a different store tomorrow.

There was a sign saying all customers were required to have mask and gloves, but clearly not enforced as there were at least two individuals shopping then without.

I washed hands, face, mask , and gloves, upon return. Hung the latter items in the sunshine to dry.

[cellio]

Dani and I use a Google doc. We have a list of oft-bought stuff (sorted the way we want) and bold the things we need, and we add free-form stuff to the beginning when needed.

It's been a while since I looked for apps, but last time I did, I couldn't find one that would let me sort *and order* the things the way I want, which is to say: in the order they appear in the store I shop at. I want to make one pass, going down only the aisles I need, with no backtracking.

[hlinspjalda]

You can sorta do that with Keep, although if you have a fat-fingered spouse things will get misfiled and disarrayed quickly.* :-/ Keep will let you indent items in a list, so for example I have a list item called FROZEN and every frozen item goes under it, each item indented. It works a bit like org mode in that you can check or uncheck the entire section by touching the section head. And you can pull items up or down the list at will, into and out of sections as well. (To date they have ignored my feedback about having an "alphabetize" option, which I want for some lists that aren't for groceries.)

* One of the big tells for the difference between my hand skills and Mr. Fixer's can be seen in the ways we interact with touch screens.

[hudebnik]

As it happens, the one I downloaded to try (AnyList) says it does that sorting-and-ordering automatically: as you check things off, it remembers in what order you did it, and the next time it puts things in that order. I've only been shopping with it once so far, so I haven't seen how well it works.

And as far as I can tell, AnyList doesn't have a "check off" function, only "delete". Which seems bizarre, since most people's shopping lists are going to have a lot of repeats from week to week. I must be missing something.