Out of Milk

Have you come across this app yet? I was searching for food & cooking related apps for my new Android smartphone (my first), and it is so cool!

Out of Milk is an electronic shopping list, which is really handy. But even more helpful for me is that you can also use it to inventory just about anything that you use (and use up). Pantry, spice rack (or in my case, spice cupboard; I outgrew my wedding gift spice rack about 25 years ago), refrigerator, even your bathroom toiletries. Just create any custom list you want, enter each item and the quantity on hand, and you've got an inventory. It even has a handy bar code reader to make things easier. For the pantry, I can track the number of items I have on hand. For the spice cupboard, I can actually track how much is left of any item, either by a sliding scale (half left, or almost empty) or by actual ounces.

It took me about 3 hours to build inventory lists for canned goods, staples (flour, sugar, etc.), herbs/spices, and condiments… time well spent. I got to test it last night when we made a trip to Trader Joes on the way home from dinner. I picked up the few things I knew we needed, and Dave browsed. Every time he came up with some bottle or jar in his hand, I could tell him whether we already had it in the pantry (or refrigerator), and whether we needed a spare. How cool is that?

The shopping list and inventory lists are linked, too. If I enter shampoo on my shopping list, it will show me a list of all the shampoo items in the inventory, so I can choose which I need to buy.