Zip it with ZipList

Sorry about the grainy quality here but I scanned this old sepia photo with my phone.  Today would have been Mom's 91st birthday had she lived.  Everybody, included my favorite ex-husband, called her Granny and she was a pistol.  No matter what room you would walk into, Mom would be the smallest person there and she made up for it with her quirky personality.  Happy birthday, Granny.

Okay - I've been looking for an easy, effective way to organize my grocery shopping and I have finally found it.  I have worked with Astrid Tasks and Evernote but they were always missing something or were just too complicated, and ended up frustrating me at the store.

I read about ZipList in an issue of ShopSmart so I thought I would give it a try and it turned out to be even better than I was hoping for.  This isn't just a shopping list.  It pretty much includes everything to do with grocery shopping...from weekly ads for your favorite store, menu planners, recipes, and the coolest thing every - the ZipList Recipe Clipper!!

The way the Clipper works is just brilliant.  Say you are lounging in your favorite chair watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory while strolling through Pinterest.  You see a recipe that sounds so good that you have to have it.  All you do is click on the Clipper on your tool bar and Clipper puts that recipe in your Recipe Box in ZipList.  As you look through the ingredients for your recipe you realize that you are out of chocolate chips so you click on it and it goes straight to your grocery list. 

And get this!!  If you are reading a blog and the recipe is not in list form Clipper is so smart that once it gets to your Recipe Box it is in recipe form!!  Words just fail me.

ZipList keeps track of several stores for you, including the weekly ad.  Just scroll through the ad and click on what you want to buy and it will be added to your chosen list and in the correct category.  I have my categories set up just like QFC so I just go down the list and get out of there fast.  Studies have shown that the longer you are in the store the more you spend.

I have the free ZipList app on my smartphone which syncs with my pc and Color Nook so I'm never without my grocery list.  If you would rather have a paper list or recipe, just print it out.

I have just skimmed the top of what ZipList will do.  You can go here and take a look.  Even if you aren't interested in the grocery list part the Clipper is definitely a keeper.  Not in my wildest dreams did I think that there would be anything like it.

I had trouble clicking and dragging the Clipper to my tool bar, so I right clicked on the Clipper box, chose "add to favorites", then scrolled down to "favorites bar" and that worked like a charm.