Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Meal planning and grocery shopping at once

Meal planning and grocery shopping can be a lot of work. This week’s tip comes from kerrpe, who shares a neat setup of meal planning that then generates an organized list for the grocery store.

I haven’t seen any recipe / grocery suggestions in a long time, so I’ll share my set up. This has been the evolution of ten years of RTM. ;)

I have three lists, one for each major type of recipe - Mains, Sides, Other (you could make these subtasks, but I find it easier to just have a list). The recipes are tasks under these lists. The actual recipe instructions are either in the notes or just a URL (sometimes that’s much faster, although I have had some web pages disappear over time so I recommend putting in the note).

Here’s the good part:

Ingredients are subtasks to the recipe task, and are tagged “g” for grocery. Mostly they’re all checked, but when I want to make a recipe I just uncheck the items I need to buy and they appear in my “g” tag list. I assign priority based on how my store is arranged (1=veg area, 2=meat, 3=dairy, none=shelf or freezer) and arrange my “g” list by priority.

Random items (like paper towels) are also tagged “g” and prioritized, but just go on a Shopping list.

Now when I enter the store, I have a list for exactly what I need, in the order I need.

Thanks for sharing this tip, kerrpe! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.