There are tons of apps for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch that will help you in your weekly pursuit of groceries. Grocery Gadget, Grocery IQ, Green Grocer, and Shopper are all good options to help you create lists for the store, and many come with useful features like barcode scanners, sorting by aisle or section, and push notifications (so your kids can let you know while you’re at the store that they just finished off the milk or eggs). But after the novelty of these programs wears off, you might be tempted to return to the ease of a paper list (especially with magnetic grocery pads that have items already organized so that all you have to do is check them off as you run out to create your list for the week). However, Remember the Milk, which is actually a to-do list application rather than a specific grocery program, offers a lot more functionality to busy shoppers on the go. And thanks to a major update, it’s easier than ever to use.

You’ll start simply enough by creating a to-do list with items like “remember the milk”, “meeting with Steve”, or “call car dealership for service appointment”. You can do this online at your home or office and then sync with your mobile device of choice to download updates (once daily for the free version), or you can punch in tasks directly to the app. Once you’ve added items to your list you have a variety of options to make them more specific. You will begin by sorting them into days of the week (today, tomorrow, Saturday, etc.) and then you can add times if you want. You can also categorize and compartmentalized them by how they fit into your life (personal, work, or study, for example), assign priority levels (high priority items will move to the top of the list), and tag or repeat items (like a recurring weekly “grocery list” reminder).

Of course, you might need to add a bit of information, which is where the note-taking feature comes into play. You can open any task to easily add notes, so if you’ve listed a trip to the grocery store as a task to be completed, you can quickly punch in notations detailing which items to pick up. It doesn’t offer all the nuances of other grocery list apps on the market, but it’s a simple way to attach this sub-category to your overall collection of daily tasks. And with the new functionality, it’s easier than ever to navigate and update your lists.

For example, you now have the option to look at your daily lists one at a time or scroll through items for the week. And when you select an item to see the details, a new toolbar allows you to quickly change the status of your task (complete, postpone, or delete). Also new is the multiple editing feature, which lets users select several items at once to change their properties in tandem (move them to another date, change the priority level, etc.). Of course, some of the best features have remained intact. Users will still enjoy the ability to add searchable tags and save lists for quick future reference. Remember the milk may not be the most comprehensive grocery app on the market, but the simple interface is easy to navigate and it will help to make sure that all of your tasks are completed in a timely manner, grocery shopping included.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this guest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

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