Making A List, Checking It Twice

By JEFF HOUCK The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 30, 2007

THINGS TO DO FOR THIS ARTICLE:

Introduce Bill Keaggy. (A St. Louis newspaper photo editor and married father of two who describes himself as a "collector, maker and breaker of things.")

Explain hobby. (He collects and photographs odd things: box cameras, rocks shaped like shoes, dirt, discarded bookmarks.)

Discuss his most famous collection. (Discarded grocery lists he has displayed on his Web site.)

Detail its origin. (Keaggy found an ordinary list in the parking lot of a St. Louis grocery store. Fascinated, he kept finding more in empty shopping carts. After he collected about 30 of them, he put them online in 1999. They're now at GroceryLists.org.)

What happened next? (Visitors to his Web site, including grocery cashiers, started sending him grocery lists they found as well as lists they were finished with.)

How many? (Thousands. Keeps them in shoe boxes at home.)

Talk about the book. (Keaggy sorted the lists and, in the process, published a new book, "Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found" (How, $19.99).)

Mention sorting details (Keaggy broke them into 20 groups, with themes including "poor spelling," "extremely short lists," "highly organized lists" and "sad lists." There's a section featuring lists with doodles.)

Add book details. (Almost all of the lists are printed at actual size. Each is accompanied by a mercilessly snarky comment.)

Use example. (For a list that includes the words "Smimply Orange," Keaggy jokes, "Smimply Orange? Smimply Smtupid.")

Include another example. (For a list written on a coffee-cup sleeve, Keaggy writes, "You spent $4 on coffee and saved a fraction of a cent on paper. Nice job!")

Add final example. (He draws an easy conclusion about the maker of one list based on its contents: "Malt-O-Meal, prune juice, a vanity stool, hemorrhoidal suppositories. Old person!")

Offer more book details. (The chapter that includes lists written on personal documents is jaw-dropping. Tax returns, bank statements, deposit slips … all were fodder for using as lists on their opposite, blank sides. And all were left behind in shopping carts.)

Include funny side note. (Keaggy challenged his wife to come up with recipes based on various found lists.)

Mention misspellings. (Apparently, Americans are befuddled about how to spell "banana.")

Cite example. (For list with the words "pork stake," Keaggy jokes, "Maybe they're going to slay some vampire pigs!")

Use quote about what alarms him. ("I knew some people had problems with spelling. I had no idea so many had that large of a problem.")

Use meta-quote. ("My dream is for someone to find one of my grocery lists and send it back to me. That would come full circle.")

DO'S AND DON'TS

Bill Keaggy keeps thousands of shopping lists in shoe boxes at his home. He found many of them in carts at grocery stores, but most were e-mailed or sent to him by readers at his Web site, GroceryLists.org.

With his exposure to so many types and kinds of lists, we asked him for advice on what shoppers should and shouldn't do when making a list. He offered these do's and don'ts.

DO:

•Write the list in chunks - meaning, if you write down oranges, leave space after that so you can write down other fruits later and get all of them while you're in the fruit section. Most people write their list in a stream-of-consciousness way, and that can waste time at the store.

•Be very specific if you're making a list for someone who will be shopping for you: brands, sizes, quantities, maybe even locations in the store.

•Really try to stick to your list. Don't cave in to impulse buys. It's fine to stray from your list if nonperishable items you frequently need are on sale, and you can stock up on them.

•Have fun with it: Abbreviate things in a quirky way, plant jokes in them, etc.

•Leave your list in the shopping cart when you're done.

DON'T:

•Write your list on the back of private documents.

•Make the list (or go shopping) when you're hungry.

•Allow yourself or your family to buy only unhealthful foods.

•Spell banana like this: bnana, banna, bananna, bannes, etc.

•Leave your grocery list in the shopping cart. Bill Keaggy might add it to his collection of grocery lists.

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.