by Jeff Dubois

“Can you pick up milk, green olives and sour cream for the baked potatoes on your way home?” I printed the email Nancy sent me before I headed out the door, and then promptly forgot the document on the printer’s paper tray. Three hours later, in the grocery store adjacent to the transit station that I passed through on the way home, I placed milk, cream and stuffed olives into the cart, then proceeded to the cash. As a result, we did not have baked spuds and sour cream as a side with our dinner that evening. We did, however, have extra cream in the fridge for our coffee.

I don’t know how many times I have forgotten to pick something up that Nanz had asked for. Nor, conversely, how many times she has arrived home, only to assert: “I knew I forgot something.” With all the technology in our household, I knew there had to be a simply and pragmatic tool for keeping something as simple as a grocery list synchronized between our two phones.

Not surprisingly, there are a wealth of alternatives to choose from. After much consideration, I finally settled on one which met our needs: “OurGroceries” is the simplest way to keep your grocery lists instantly synchronized on all the smartphones in your household - and it’s a free app!

When you use OurGroceries, you will never leave home without your shopping list again. (Unless you leave your phone at home!) Moreover, shared shopping lists are synchronized in real time so it’s ideal for household use.

One other feature I really liked was the ability to access your shared shopping list using a web browser by logging into your account on the OurGroceries website. This has proven to be real handy in the summer when I’m at the cabin. Nanz generally does the shopping in the city (where prices are better) and comes up on the weekend so the list of needed items are at her fingertips.

OurGroceries is a creation of HeadCode, a software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an R&D office in Waterloo, Ontario. Though the app is free on Google Play (and iStore) it is ad-supported.

If, you’re like me, and you not only find ads annoying but you also like to support software development outside the advertising stream, you can purchase OurGroceries Key from the Play Store for $4.99.

Originally published: May, 2017

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