One of life's little frustrations has to be the moment you arrive home from the supermarket only to realise that you've forgotten to purchase something you really need. And almost as irritating is that phone call you receive from your other half asking you to pick up 'just one more item'  just as you're arriving at the check-out, or even worse as you're already loading up the car!

One way to significantly reduce these moments of "grrrr" is to set up a Shopping List System whereby whenever an item is about to be finished and needs replacing, it is immediately added to your Shopping List. Sounds simple and yet so many of us rely on memory, just jot down a list right before departing for the Supermarket, or decide that wandering the aisles and choosing whatever items grab your attention is the way to go. These methods invariably lead the shopper to arrive home without obvious essentials like bin bags or milk and to the purchase of a few non-essentials such as that DVD on special offer that you'll probably never watch.

Grocery List

I used to print these out in batches but to save on recycling I've recently laminated one using my Bonsaii L407-A A4 Document Photo Thermal Laminator, and fill it in with my EXPO Low-Odor Dry Erase Markers, You can then wipe away each item as you shop and clean the entire page with a baby wipe once home. Now the only thing we need to remember is to take the multitude of used plastic shopping bags that we always say we need to recycle and almost never remember to bring with us to the supermarket (I think we've managed it once in the past two years but I've now added a reminder to the bottom of my shopping list so here's hoping!).