Many of us like to shop in bulk for our non-perishable items, so we can stock up on these items for the entire month. Plan to Eat has a few options for setting up your shopping list to accommodate your bulk shopping and weekly shopping needs.
Set up your stores:
We recommend creating two different stores in your list - one for perishable items and one for non-perishables. After you create your monthly meal plan, you can sort items into their respective store and shop for your bulk items all at once and your perishable items selectively.
Learn about adding stores to your list on the website.
Learn about adding stores to your list in the app.
Plan to Eat remembers your store preferences and will automatically place items in their specified store when they are added to your list in the future. You may need to make a lot of changes the first time you sort your list this way, but after that the program will remember your preferences.
Set your date ranges:
You can customize your date range on the shopping list to display the items you need to shop for from the recipes on your meal planner. For the non-perishables you can set it for the entire bulk shopping trip and do your bulk shopping. Then for perishables, you can change it for the week ahead to grab the perishable items you need.
Learn about changing the date range on your shopping list.
Shop with your separate lists:
You can either accomplish this on the app, by quickly changing the date range after you’ve completed your non-perishable shopping.
Or you can print two separate lists - one for the full month of non-perishables and one for the perishables needed for the week ahead. To do this: set your date range for the full month of non-perishables and print the shopping list and then change the date range to the first week of perishable items and then print a second list.
Learn about printing your shopping list.
If you have questions about how to make this work in your own shopping list, please email us at [email protected]