Becky and I have two very different styles of grocery shopping. I shop like my mother, entertaining possibilities while traversing all the aisles. She swears to never accompany me to Target ever again.

Behold, our compromise:

I print out two copies of a spreadsheet of items, with columns for Item Aisle, and Meal. When creating the list, I sort it by Meal, and delete (or hide) the dinner meals. Then, we add the items we want, along with the aisle it’s in. When we have all the meals for the week ready, I sort it by Aisle, and we split it in half in such a way that we get the aisles we’re best at.

I’ve noticed that we tend to optimize for our circumstance, but one of the reasons I enjoy the conversation of programmers, scientists, and philosophers is that the effort is explicit and frequent. Little improvements like these can go a long way. For example, this is just a first draft, but Becky did not run the cart into me or leave me behind once!