College apartment grocery list

Move-in day isn't a normal grocery run

Walk into an empty apartment and half of what you spend isn't food: it's oil, salt, toilet paper and detergent. Things you buy once and use for months, which is why the first receipt looks alarming next to every one after it.

This template mixes both on purpose. Week two, drop the cleaning supplies and the dry pantry and the bill roughly halves.

The hard part isn't what to buy

It's who buys, who pays, and whose food is whose. Sharing works well for basics — oil, salt, paper goods, cleaning supplies — and badly for everything else, because nobody eats the same thing at the same time.

• Share the pantry and cleaning supplies: everyone uses them without noticing.
• Keep fresh food separate, and nobody has to police the fridge.
• A shared list on everyone's phone kills the classic "I thought you were buying it": whoever finishes something adds it right then.
• One jar of each thing. Three open jars of paprika is money and shelf space gone.

Where the money actually goes

Takeout and delivery on the nights nobody feels like cooking. No list fixes that entirely, but having pasta, eggs and sauce in the apartment removes the most common excuse.

A whole chicken and frozen vegetables are the two lines that cut cost per meal the most without requiring anyone to cook better or have more time.