[Feature Friday]: The Staples List

It's another quick hit of Plan to Eat know-how with The Staples List! Get to know what the Staples List is and how Riley and Roni use it for their weekly shopping lists.
Read about more the Staples list for the app.
And the website. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner.

Riley: staples list is a static list to keep inventory and store items that you purchase frequently, but will not show up in your shopping list because they aren't ingredients and recipes. Um, this might be things like bananas, apples, trash bags, paper towels, or even shampoo.

Roni: Yeah, you can find the staples list on the website. If you are on your shopping list, the staples list lives over in the upper left-hand corner of the sidebar. You'll see, it says shopping list. And then below it says stables list. If you're on the plan to eat app, you need to go to the shop tab, which is also your shopping list.

And then up in that header that has. Cute grocery cart and it says [00:01:00] shopping list, you can tap on that and it'll give you a drop down menu where you can select staples list from there.

And you can simply just tap on multiple items or click on multiple items in the staples list and add items in bulk to your shopping list. And Like Riley said, the staples list is a static list. So when you are selecting these items to add to your shopping list and you finally press the button to copy to your shopping list, you're not actually doing anything to change the staples list.

You are just making a copy of those items, adding them to your shopping list. So that way, when you go to the grocery store, you don't forget any of those items.

Riley: Like a use case for this feature. I feel like this is like kind of a confusing feature for some people, um, is like you, you're keeping a list of items that you have at home, or things that you regularly purchased. but maybe they're not in your meal plan this week. So let's say you're planning lasagna, but you know, you need to buy, Something totally different, like canned green beans, you know, like, and that's not in your lasagna recipe, but you know, you need to buy that.

Maybe that's something you [00:02:00] keep as a staple at your house all the time. Um, so that's on your staples list. And so, you know, you want to purchase that this week, you go in there into your staples list, you select it. Maybe you select some other things like rice or oatmeal. Maybe that is a week where you need to buy trash bags or paper towels, and you grab all those items by checking the boxes.

Um, and then you copied it over to your shopping list so that when you're in the store, you buy.

Roni: Yeah. I think that when I use this, uh, staples list mostly is, I know that we've talked about this a little bit before on the podcast, is that, you know, like, uh, breakfasts are pretty automated at our house. I don't like plan things on my meal planner for breakfast usually. And so. Eggs or half and half or coffee.

Um, like those kinds of things that are more like breakfast items, those always live on my staples list. And when I go to make my shopping list every week, I just go through, click on all those things, copy them over to my shopping list. And then like breakfast stuff has taken care of, and it's not actually living on my meal planner. 

Riley: Absolutely a way that I would use it as like for snacks for my daughter. Um, again, it's [00:03:00] not something in my meal plan, but it's something that we buy all the time and there's some specific things that she really likes that we kind of have on hand. And so I think that the, this is a mental fatigue thing of like, instead of keeping it in your mind, you get to keep it in the staples list and then.

You can go see it on that list and move it to your shopping list. And you're not having to second guess yourself and think, oh my gosh, do we need that? Do we not? You know, like that big question, mark. It's it's it's not taking up that extra space in your brain. So just put it on the staples list in the live there forever.

Roni: Yeah, exactly. And one thing before we go to note about items on the staples list is that when you copy them over to your shopping list, they act as manually added items and manually added items on your shopping list are not tied to a specific date range. So when you add these staples list items to your shopping list, you can, change your shopping list from different date ranges.

And if you have. These items off your list, they're going to stay on your list until you actively check them off your list, or you can use the restore list button, but [00:04:00] just so you know that if you are like what's happening with my staples items, why are they never leaving? You got to actually check them off your list in order for them to go away. 

Riley: If you're on the desktop site, um, your recipe will be, connects to that recipe key. So, you know, like a lasagna, like I already mentioned B uh, maybe breakfast casserole. But when you move an item over from your staples list, there's not going to be, um, a recipe key associated with it, so I can help you differentiate it from the other items on your list. 

Roni: Well, we hope that you found that this was helpful. We love the staples lists, use it all the time. I literally use it every week. When I do my meal planning. If you have questions, you can always email our support staff at help@plantoeat.com with any questions about features. And if you want to get in touch with me and then Riley, you can email us at podcast@plantoeat.com.