How I stopped rebuilding my grocery list every week

How to automate your kitchen inventory, buy back your time & never write a grocery list from scratch again.

🎧 Prefer to listen while you drive or fold laundry? Paid subscribers can click the play button at the top of this post.

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If you’ve ever stared into an open fridge at 4:00 PM and felt a wave of absolute dread, you know that the hardest part of grocery shopping isn’t the driving or the paying.

It’s the thinking.

It’s the mental gymnastics. Did I use the last of the cumin? Did the kids actually eat the yogurt I bought last week? It’s the act of inventing the wheel, from scratch, every single week.

The average trip to the grocery store takes 46 minutes. And honestly? I’d argue that’s being conservative. I know for me, it’s 30 minutes just to get to and from my store. Do that twice a week & we’re talking at least 2 hours spent just buying food.

That doesn’t even account for the invisible labor: the list-making, the inventory checking, & the constant mental tab of “what are we out of?”

We have to stop treating our kitchens like art studios where we create something new every week, and start treating them like a wardrobe.

The goal isn’t to go into our kitchens hoping for inspiration. The goal is having a reliable uniform. The goal is to focus on inventory management so that we don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike in order to get our families fed. And I’m breaking down exactly how I automated the process to get my brain back (and save about $3k a year in the process)…

A quick note: For paid subscribers, you’ll find I’d dropped all the real-life details for this post are at the bottom of this post, including the numbers that made grocery services feel like a no-brainer and my exact Apple Reminders setup (with the master template). It’s in the PS. 👯‍♀️

Wait, shouldn’t I plan the meals before I shop?

Logically, yes. But we aren’t doing this the “logical” way—we are doing this the sustainable way.

The old way forces you to invent a new meal plan every week that then forces you to generate an entire grocery list from scratch. That is exhausting (not to mention frustrating when you inevitably forget something as obvious as the 2% milk.)

My approach flips the script.

We start by automating the 80% you buy on repeat — the staples, the snacks, the basics. That’s your base layer. When that’s handled, meal planning stops feeling like a weekly reinvention project and starts feeling like… a smaller decision.

If you take nothing else from this post, let it be this: you’re not “bad at groceries.” You’re just having to manage way too much of it in your head rather than letting there be a system to manage it for you. If you can find one way to just streamline things a bit, I think you’ll find a huge sense of relief by freeing up that headspace for yourself.

Talk soon,
Erin

P.S.—Paid subscribers, your behind-the-scenes pieces are below (quick & informal), including the exact numbers that made grocery services feel worth it and my Apple Reminders setup (plus the master template). 👯‍♀️

And if you haven’t checked out the paid section yet, you can join anytime. There’s a free 7-day trial if you want to try it first. 🥰 You can tap below to check it out.

1. The Math (Or: Why I Don’t Feel Guilty About Grocery Services)

For a long time, I told myself that grocery delivery was a “luxury.” I felt like I should be doing it myself to save money.

But when I actually ran the numbers, the opposite was true.