Shopping Lists

Meghan grocery.png Rachel shopping.jpeg

Unlike task and schedule lists, shopping lists organize everyday life by providing instructions about which products to buy and when. A weekly grocery list can determine which meals are to be prepared that week, which regularly used household items need replenishing, or, if lists are preserved from week to week, which items are purchased most frequently. 

Shopping lists help writers avoid unfocused time in the store; like the other two list categories, they are meant to optimize time spent on necessary tasks and to avoid the inconvenience of forgetting things. In addition, as the first example demonstrates, shopping lists can also organize life by keeping the writer to a specific budget for weekly shopping trips. 

Finally, grocery lists can reflect other aspects of the writer's life in the moment in which they were written. For instance, the second example reflects the writer's upcoming travel plans and helps her organize that activity through purchasing the necessary items for it. 

Although shopping lists may be less task-or-accomplishment-focused than the other two list categories, they still prompt specific actions from the writer/reader by indicating what stores should be visited, and where within the store the shopper needs to spend the most time. Additionally, shopping lists invite the same kinds of involvement and revision found in the previous kinds of lists. For instance, grocery lists must travel with the writer in order to be used successfully (as many a shopper has realized too late), and list-making apps like the one used in example one demonstrate that "checking things off" is as important in these lists as it is to the others. In all three categories, it seems, it is important to know what is done and what is still left to do, so that the writer may act accordingly. 

 

Shopping Lists