Shopping app for not shopping!

September 18, 2020 12:54 PM

I just cleared out the kitchen and discovered multiple multiples of things. We have enough tumeric in this house to start a small cult. See also tissues, zip ties, etc. We don't need to buy any more for a long time. But we obviously have some sort of worry that we might be without so I would like a shopping app into which I can enter what we already have plenty of.

So my thought is, I am in the store and going ooh, look, 20% off when you buy three packs of tumeric, and then I can look at my app and see no, tumeric is on the no-buy list. At some future point, in about 2027 as I notice I am running out of tumeric I can go in and uncheck it.

The app should be accessible by everyone in the home and be on both android and ios, so perhaps it's a website instead. For the actual shopping part I would like us to have a list where we can both add stuff we need for shopping and then uncheck it as we put the stuff in the basket to avoid the "I got us tumeric today" - "Oh, shit, I bought two yesterday" interactions. In an absolutely ideal world this would be a smart enough app that it might suggest that given our usual purchasing patterns it's time for us to buy washing powder or whatever. Not sure what other functions I might like, I mainly want to have a no-buy list of shit to steer clear of.

posted by Iteki to Shopping (11 answers total)

Hmm, the first thing that comes to mind is maybe a spreadsheet in Google drive containing a kitchen inventory? That wouldn't be "smart" enough to give reminders, as far as I know, but it might be a start insofar as providing an easily-accessible list of what you have...
posted by aecorwin at 1:08 PM on September 18, 2020

I’ve used AnyList for things like this and it works well. You can have different categories and tags, and multiple people can access the same lists.

You can also make it so that things simply become invisible when you check them off, as opposed to deleting them. I use that feature for my regular weekly shopping list, but it may be useful for you if you have certain things you want to always make sure you have in your pantry. (This feature is optional though)
posted by lunasol at 1:11 PM on September 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

For just a list of what's in-stock and what's needed, I know a lot of households using Evernote or Google Keep.
posted by Candleman at 1:17 PM on September 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

The classic app Paprika has a pantry function where you can list things that you have on-hand, and when you go to add items from your meal plan to the grocery list those items are automatically unchecked from being added. The pantry is also one of the main headers in the sidebar (at least on iOS) so it'd be easy to check if you were wondering about turmeric. It syncs between devices, iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.
posted by past unusual at 1:24 PM on September 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ground turmeric is only good for around 6 months so you may need to buy more sooner than you think.
posted by Lanark at 1:53 PM on September 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Out of Milk is a shopping list app for Android and iOs that has a pantry function.
posted by Skybly at 1:58 PM on September 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sortly is an app specifically for home inventory and does everything you mentioned, including metrics/reports, but it's also pretty expensive. For other, similar apps, I think the search term you want is "home inventory app".
posted by thebots at 9:22 PM on September 18, 2020

Would it work to put the pantry items on a separate list that you have to manually switch to? If so, then almost any shopping list app should have ability to make multiple lists and name them whatever you want. I use Bring. I have separate lists for Grocery, Drugstore and Homegoods,. I could easily name one Pantry but it wouldn't interfere if I put a Pantry item on the Grocery list. I'd have to check it. It lets you invite people to share the lists and it's available on IOS and Android.
posted by CathyG at 11:28 PM on September 18, 2020

Response by poster: The suggestion of regular list apps makes me wonder if Trello might work just fine for this, since we both already have it?
posted by Iteki at 7:35 AM on September 19, 2020

Best answer: I don't have an app to recommend, but I will mention that if you are not the kinds of people to keep on top of the inventory "manually" before you shop, you might find the act of putting the inventory into an app tedious and you will eventually fall behind on it and end up where you are now. So, before you go down this road at least one of you needs to be committed to trying to keep the information current. Remember, the app will only be able to do what you want it to do if the data it needs remains current.
posted by TimHare at 8:12 PM on September 20, 2020

For Trello, are you thinking of making one column Pantry and another column Grocery List? If you do a full inventory of your pantry and make a card for every item, you can then move the card to GroceryList when you run low. It could work. Would the number of items in the columns make the whole thing unmanageable? You really have to stay on top of it every time you shop.

I might recommend another column called Overstocked and put things in there if you really have too many already, based on the way you phrased your question.
posted by CathyG at 8:49 PM on September 20, 2020