Epicurious digital director Maggie Hoffman bought a magnetic white board for her six-year-old daughterāand then quickly stole it for herself. It was an accident, really: The white board was conveniently positioned on the refrigerator, so she found herself using it for grocery lists and meal plans, leaving little space for robots and hearts and connect-the-dot games.
Now everyone wins because her fridge is equipped with a whopping four white boards, positioned on each quadrant of the fridge, each with a specific purpose (and yes, one of them is for kid drawings).
One board houses the family grocery listāMaggie and her husband add to it throughout the week as they identify ingredients theyāll need. Since the white board is right there, they can write āmustardā or āParmesanā as they notice theyāre running low, which makes them far less likely to forget. āIt makes it so I never have to ruminate on my list, reminding myself to get milk or bananas. The list isnāt something I keep in my headāit exists outside of my mind,ā she says. When itās time to shop, everythingās right there in one place.
Another board is dedicated to to-do lists, like cleaning tasks to tackle before hosting a dinner party. One is mostly for listing whatās in the freezer. āOnce itās frozen, everything just becomes an anonymous cube, which hopefully you labeledābut this list helps me know there are, for example, two containers of turkey chili and three containers of pasta sauce,ā Maggie says. āWhen youāre not sure what to eat for dinner, the inventory is handy. You can erase the ingredient when itās gone, and then you know that thereās no more chicken broth in there.ā
And while Maggie rarely sticks to a rigorous meal plan unless there are houseguests in town, another board occasionally helps her keep track of the food sheāll make over the course of the week. She also likes to use that board to keep track of the menu during a dinner party. You know how it isāyouāve got a vegetable side in the oven and some fish on the grill. Youāre running back and forth, transporting a salad or a crunchy topping from kitchen to table, and somewhere in all the melee, you still manage to forget the sauce you made earlier specifically for the night. To prevent this, Maggie will jot down a menu, referencing it throughout the night to ensure she doesnāt forget anything. āIt's both a dinner party to-do list as youāre cooking, and then a reminder: don't forget this element of the meal,ā she explains.
If youāre a chaotic grocery list maker, an entertainer, a forgetter of freezer dishes and dinner party sauces alike, a multi-white board system might be for you. You can buy as many boards as you need, or opt for one large board, dividing it to allow for various lists that fit your needs. Just make sure to leave space for those kid doodles too. Because if thereās one thing thatās more important than a constant stash of really good mustard, itās robot drawings.
