This afternoon, cabin fever setting in and our cupboards nearly bare, Olof and I packed off the three older kids to various friends and family members and headed to town to do some grocery shopping. We hadn’t given a great deal of consideration to what we’d buy–I wasn’t thinking beyond cat food, kitty litter, and some fruits and vegetables–and I was expecting the trip to be one of those where you wander half-aimlessly through the aisles for an hour or so, then wind up at the cash register having spent way too much money and bought way too little of substance.

When we chose our cart, however, providence struck.

Folded up in the back corner was a forgotten piece of paper, the kind of thing I usually disregard. This paper caught my eye, though, the words on it not written in your usual list style–item by item, vertically–but horizontally, and grouped closely together. At first glance, it looked like a note or a letter instead of a shopping list, and curiosity got the better of me so I unfolded and read it. Alas, closer scrutiny revealed it to be a grocery list after all, and I commented to Olof, a little disappointed and put-out, “That’s a strange way to write a grocery list.”

“Is there anything good on it?” he asked, leaning over my shoulder to give it a look.

“Coffee,” I read. “Mashed potatoes.” I scanned ahead a little further. “Oh, look, välling and fabric softener.”

“We could buy that stuff,” Olof said, and a plan was born.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, we appropriated that list for ourselves. At first we thought we would buy what was on the list, but also add our own items to it. Then we thought it might be better to buy only what we wanted from the list, but nothing else. Finally, we decided that the only thing to do was to buy everything that was on the list and nothing that wasn’t. It was that simple. To do anything else clearly wouldn’t be following the list, and why even have a list if we weren’t going to stick to it?

After a few fits and starts, we got in the spirit of things–it didn’t hurt that there was a week’s worth of dinner menus listed after the groceries, so we didn’t have to wonder endlessly, But what will we do with *that*?–and got down to the business of filling our cart with items carefully decided upon by someone obviously far more organized than we.

Though we left the store without a few things I would really have liked to have (a 9V battery for the beeping smoke detector comes to mind), it was nice to have a list we’d committed to. Each time one of us was tempted by something, all the other had to do was look pointedly at the list. Yogurt? Nope, not on the list. Coke? Frozen lunches? Apples? Candy? Are they on the list? No? Then, sorry … you’ll have to do without.

Since we left the store, we’ve been congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Aren’t we clever and daring? Isn’t it the height of avant-garde shopping to use a stranger’s grocery list, never once deviating from it, even though we never eat instant mashed potatoes and we just bought an economy pack of diapers two days ago? Aren’t we fun?

Perhaps best of all, whenever the kids complain about dinner in the upcoming week–as they undoubtedly will–I can just shrug and throw up my hands. “Don’t blame me,” I’ll say. “It’s on the list.”