News Article

For: September Issue

To: Gulf Coast Womens News

By: Linda K. Bowman, Ext. Agt. IV - Family & Consumer Sciences

Santa Rosa County Extension Service

Telephone: 850/623-3868 or 939-1259, ext. 1360

“Create A Grocery Master List”

Psst–Want to save money on your groceries? Want to spend less time grocery shopping? Want to have an organized pantry that works for you? Try the Grocery Master List.

A Little Prep Work...First, tape a piece of paper to the fridge. For a week or two, write down everything you eat or take out of the pantry to cook with.

After a week or two, you’ll have a pretty good list of most things you and your family eat or cook with milk, bread, chips, soda, popcorn, ice cream–hey, where are all those fruits and vegetables we’re supposed to be eating!

A Little Categorizing...Categorizing is the most important part of creating you master list, but you already have all the information you need. Sit down with your list from the refrigerator and rewrite it into categories. It’s the categories that will make all the difference in shopping thriftily and quickly.

Categorizing gives you a quick way to see your shopping list the way you think about it. Do your categorizing thoroughly, and you can pretty much coast afterwards.

My Grocery Master List is categorized by meals: Breakfast, milk, cereal, dried fruit, oatmeal; Lunch, sandwich bread, ham, cheese, turkey, pretzels, cookies, canned cola, Dinner, chicken, hamburger, lettuce, tomato, salad dressing, pasta, spaghetti sauce, Drinks, seltzer water, 2-liter colas–you get the idea. You may want to organize your Grocery Master List by grocery aisles, or by individual, or by some hybrid method. Whatever makes the most sense to you.

Now You Can Coast! Now that you have your Grocery Master List, or GML (like everything that’s important in modern life, we can give it an acronym), worked out according to your categories, you can use it to handle everything having to do with groceries–and I mean everything. I use mine as a guide when I select recipes for the week, when I’m making my weekly grocery list, when I’m deciding what to put into my shopping cart, to help me remember to look for things I like to buy on sale, and even to organize my pantry. Let’s see how this works.

Meal Planning–Your GML obviously lists the foods your family likes best, so it’s easy to plan recipes and meals based on the list.

Weekly Grocery List–You can use your GML to check your refrigerator and pantry before you go to the store. With the Grocery Master List, you can walk through the kitchen and pantry and just mark the things you’re low on. You’ll have an instant list every time you go to the store.

At the Store–Now you can walk confidently–and quickly–through the grocery story, putting into your cart the things on your list–and you’ll get everything you need, without missing anything. This sort of pre-organization can save a lot of time, especially if you bring children along.

Buying on Sale–Knowing in advance exactly what you buy, you can plan to buy it when it’s on sale.

Pantry–The GML can help you organize your pantry, especially if you get into a rhythm of buying larger quantities of items when they’re on sale–you buy up to the limit per customer when foods go on sale.

Try the Grocery Master List–for a little up-front effort, you can save a lot of time and money at home and in the store.

For further information contact: Linda Bowman, Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent, The University of Florida--Santa Rosa County Cooperative Extension Service--IFAS, at (850)623-3868 or (850)939-1259, Ext. 1360 for south county residents, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. weekdays. Hearing-impaired individuals may call Santa Rosa County Emergency Management Service at 983-5373 (TDD).

Extension Service programs are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, age, handicap or national origin. The use of trade names in this article is solely for the purpose of providing specific information. It is not a guarantee, warranty, or endorsement of the product name(s) and does not signify that they are approved to the exclusion of others.