Your Shopping List, Built from Your Pantry

The list you wrote on the back of an envelope

Anyone who shops for a family knows the pattern. You write a list at home, forget the coriander, and remember it at the till. Or you buy a second bag of onions because nobody was sure whether there were any left.

The cause is simple: the list and the kitchen are two separate things. The shopping list does not know what is in the cupboard, and the cupboard does not know what you bought.

How the list fills itself

In Degchi the two are connected. The heading of the Shopping list screen says it plainly: "everything Low or Out lands here". When you mark an item Low or Out in your pantry, it appears on the list. You do not retype anything.

It also works from recipes. On the Home screen, a dish under Almost there tells you what is missing, for example "Missing Spinach, already on your list". If you are one or two items short of a dish, they are added for you.

You can add your own items too. Type in the Add item… box at the bottom and tap Add. Those go under a heading called Added by you.

Grouped the way you shop

The list is not one long scroll. Items are grouped by where you would buy them:

• Vegetable market
• Grocery store
• Dairy shop
• Butcher
• Added by you

Think about pav bhaji, a good test dish. Potatoes, peas, tomatoes, onions, carrots, a bell pepper and a lemon all belong at the vegetable stall. Butter belongs at the dairy shop. Bread buns and chaat masala belong at the grocery store. With groups, you walk the market once instead of backtracking.

At the shop: Go to market

When you are ready to buy, tap Go to market. The screen turns into a checklist with a counter, such as "3 of 7 bought".

Tap an item when it is in your basket. Degchi shows "Coriander bought · moved to Pantry" with an Undo button in case you tapped the wrong one. Bought items drop into a Bought · moved to Pantry section.

That moved-to-pantry step is the important one. Your pantry now says you have the coriander, so the next time you open Degchi your recipes are matched against the real shelf, not last week's guess. When everything is ticked you will see "All bought! Your pantry is full again."

Sharing the list

Not everyone who shops is the person holding the phone. Tap Share and Degchi opens your phone's share sheet with a clean, readable list headed "Degchi shopping list", so you can send it on WhatsApp to whoever is going to the market.

In Go to market mode, each item that nobody has picked up yet shows an I'll get it button, so two people do not come home with the same onions. Live claims across the family's phones arrive with family sharing, which we cover in How to Set Up Your Family in Degchi.

Fewer doubles, fewer forgotten items

• Fewer forgotten items. The list comes from what you are really running out of.
• Fewer doubles. You do not buy what you already have, because the pantry is the source of truth.
• Less typing. Mark something Low in the pantry and it is on the list. See How to Track Your Pantry with Have, Low and Out for how that works.
• A pantry that stays true. Ticking an item moves it back to the pantry automatically.

It suits snack evenings as much as big weekly shops. Planning pakoray or samosa chaat for guests? Check the dish, see what is missing, and the list is ready before you leave the house.

Try it

Degchi is a free beta. If a shopping list that remembers your kitchen sounds useful, join the Degchi beta with a Gmail address and we will send you an invite when your place opens up.