A Grocery List is a Kind of Diary
Okay. How are you doing this week, actually?
Not the hallway version. Real answer, even if it's just one word in your head right now. Good. Now let's talk about grocery lists.
I know. Bear with me.
The list in my mom's handwriting
After my mom passed, I went through this shoebox of her letters, and tucked inside one of them was just a grocery list. Nothing special. Bananas. Thread. And then, at the bottom, "call Ruth."
I sat on the floor with that scrap of paper longer than I sat with some of the actual letters.
Because think about what that tells you. She needed bananas and thread that week — so something was getting eaten, something was getting mended. And she was reminding herself to call a friend, which means Ruth mattered enough to write down, or maybe my mom knew she'd forget otherwise. That's a whole little slice of a life, in eight words, and she wasn't even trying to say anything. She was just trying to remember to buy thread.
I copied that list into my own journal. Word for word. It's in there next to entries about tables that stiffed me and rants about Patrick's knees, and honestly it might be my favorite page in the whole notebook.
A list is a diary if you're paying attention. You just don't usually notice it happening.
Why this works for people who "don't journal"
Some of you have told me, this week or a past week, that you don't have much to say. That's fine. That's most people, most days.
But you probably already write things down. Grocery lists. To-do lists. The sticky note on the fridge. Those aren't nothing. They're just diary entries you didn't file properly.
So here's what I'd try, if I were you, and this is genuinely one of the lowest-pressure things we'll do in this whole class.
Step one. Grab your last grocery list. The real one, off the counter or crumpled in your coat pocket. If you don't have one, write today's.
Step two. Copy it into your journal, exactly as is. Don't clean it up. Don't make it sound smarter.
Step three. Underneath it, write one line about what it tells you. Not what you think it should tell you — what it actually shows. Maybe it's "we're almost out of everything because I've been too tired to shop properly." Maybe it's "three kinds of cheese, we're doing fine." Both are true entries.
Step four. Date it. That's it. You're done.
Takes maybe four minutes. You could do it standing at the kitchen counter with your coat still on.
The thing I got wrong for a while
I'll tell you where I went sideways with journaling early on, because it's connected to this.
My first real attempt at morning pages, I filled two whole pages complaining about a coworker. Just unloaded. And then I felt so guilty about it — like I'd been caught being petty on paper — that I tore the pages out and threw them away.
That was the mistake. Not the complaining. The tearing out.
Because those two pages were true. That's who I was that morning, what I was carrying. Ripping them out didn't make the feeling less real, it just meant I lost the record of it. Now when something ugly or petty or small comes out on the page — and it does, plenty — I leave it. The grocery list is the same idea. The unglamorous, un-precious stuff is usually the most honest thing in the notebook. You don't get to edit your own diary into someone more interesting.
My opinion on this, plain
There's no right way to do this. People will try to sell you a system — color-coded planners, an app, a specific kind of list-making method — and mostly what they're selling you is a system, not a truth. A grocery list scribbled on the back of an envelope tells you exactly as much about your week as some fancy bullet journal spread. Probably more, because you weren't performing for it.
One small caution
If you're copying old lists or notes from a parent or grandparent's handwriting, like I did with my mom's, go easy on yourself about when you do it. I picked mine up at a random Tuesday and did not expect to sit on the kitchen floor for twenty minutes. That's fine. Just don't be surprised if a grocery list hits harder than you think it will.
Before next time
Find one ordinary list from this week — grocery, to-do, whatever's lying around — and tape or copy it into your notebook with a single line under it about what it says about your week. Nothing fancy. Bananas and thread will do just fine. 😊