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Grocy

Buying stuff is an unpleasant activity that drains your energy and time, it's the main perpetrator of the broken capitalist system, but sadly we have to yield to survive.

This article explores my thoughts and findings on how to optimize the use of time, money and mental load in grocy management to have enough stuff stored to live, while following the principles of ecology and sustainability. I'm no expert at all on either of these topics. I'm learning and making my mind while writing these lines.

grocy is a web-based self-hosted groceries & household management solution for your home.

My chosen way to deploy grocy has been using Docker. The hard part comes when you do the initial load, as you have to add all the:

  • User attributes.
  • Product locations.
  • Product groups.
  • Quantity conversions.
  • Products.

General concepts⚑

Minimum quantities⚑

The minimum quantity defines when does the product is going to be added to the shopping list, it must be enough so we have time to go to the shop to buy more, so it has to follow:

minimum quantity = max_shop_frequency * average_consumption_rate * security_factor

Where: * max_shop_frequency: is the maximum number of days between I visit the shop where I can obtain that product. If the product can be obtained in several shops we'll take the smallest number of days. * average_consumption_rate: is the average number of units consumed per day. It can be calculated by the following equation:

average_consumption_rate = total_units_consumed / days_since_first_unit_bought

The calculation could be improved giving more weight to the recent consumption against the overall trend.

  • security_factor: Is an amount to add to take into account the imprecisions on the measures. A starting security_factor could be 1.2.

But we won't have most of the required data when we start from scratch, therefore I've followed the next criteria:

  • If the product is critical, I want to always have at least a spare one, so the minimum quantity will be 2.
  • I roughly evaluate the relationship between the average_consumption_rate and the max_shop_frequency.

Also, I usually have a recipient for the critical products, so I mark the product as consumed once I transfer it from the original recipient to my recipient. Therefore I always have a security factor. This also helps to reduce the management time. For example, for the fruit, instead of marking as consumed each time I eat a piece, I mark them as consumed when I move them from the fridge to a recipient I've got in the living room.

Parent products⚑

Parent products let you group different kind of products under the same roof. The idea is to set the minimum quantity in the parent product and it will inherit all the quantities of it's children.

I've used parent products for example to set a minimum amount of red tea, while storing the different red teas in different products.

The advantage of this approach is that you have a detailed product page for each kind of product. This allows you to have different purchase - storage ratio, price evolution, set score and description for the different kinds, set different store...

The disadvantage is that you have to add and maintain additional products.

So if you expect that the difference between products is relevant split them, if you don't start with one product that aggregates all, like chocolate bar for all kinds of chocolate bars, and maybe in the future refactor it to a parent and child products.

Another good use case is if the different brands of a product sell different sizes, so the conversion from buy unit to storage unit is different. Then I'll use a parent product that specifies the minimum and the different sub products with the different conversion rate.

On the units⚑

I've been uncertain on what units use on some products.

Imagine you buy a jar of peas, should you use jar or grams? or a bottle of wine should be in bottles or milliliters?

The rule of thumb I've been using is:

  • If the product is going to be used in a recipe, use whatever measure the recipe is going to use. For example, grams for the peas.
  • If not, use whatever will cost you less management time. For example, milliliters for the wine (so I only have to update the inventory when the bottle is gone).

Workflows⚑

Doing the inventory review⚑

I haven't found a way to make the grocy inventory match the reality because for me it's hard to register when I consume a product. Even more if other people also use them. Therefore I use grocy only to know what to buy without thinking about it. For that use case the inventory needs to meet reality only before doing the groceries. I usually do a big shopping of non-perishable goods at the supermarket once each two or three months, and a weekly shopping of the rest.

Tracking the goods that are bought each week makes no sense as those are things that are clearly seen and are very variable depending on the season. Once I've automated the ingestion and consumption of products it will, but so far it would mean investing more time than the benefit it gives.

This doesn't apply to the big shopping, as this one is done infrequently, so we need a better planning.

To do the inventory review I use a tablet and the android app.

  • Open the stock overview and iterate through the locations to:
  • Make sure that the number of products match the reality
    • Iterate over the list of products checking the quantity
    • Look at the location to see if there are missing products in the inventory
  • Adjust the product properties (default location, minimum amount)
  • Check the resulting shopping list and adjust the minimum values.
  • Check the list of missing products to adjust the minimum values. I have a notepad in the fridge where I write the things I miss.

Tips⚑

Note

Very recommended to use the android app

  • Add first the products with less letters, so add first Toothpaste and then Toothpaste roommate.
  • Do the filling in iterations:
  • Add the common products: this can be done with the ticket of the last groceries, or manually inspecting all the elements in your home.
  • Incrementally add the recipes that you use
  • Add the barcodes in the products that make sense.
  • Add the score and shop userfields for the products, so you can evaluate how much you like the product and where to buy it. If you show them in the columns, you can also filter the shopping list by shop.

Future ideas⚑

I could monitor the ratio of rotting and when a product gets below the minimum stock to optimize the units to buy above the minimum quantity so as to minimize the shopping frequency. It can be saved in the max_amount user field.

To calculate it's use I can use the average shelf life, last purchased and last used specified in the product information

TODO⚑

  • Define the userfields I've used
  • Define the workflow for :
  • initial upload
  • purchase
  • consumption
  • cooking
  • How to interact with humans that don't use the system but live in the same space

Unclassified⚑

  • When creating a child product, copy the parent buy and stock units and conversion, also the expiration till it's solved the child creation or duplication (search issue)
  • Use of pieza de fruta to monitor the amount instead of per product
  • Caja de pañuelos solo se cuentan los que están encima de la nevera
  • La avena he apuntado lo que implica el rellenar el bote para consumir solo cuando lo rellene.
  • Locations are going to be used when you review the inventory so make sure you don't have to walk far

  • Tare weight not supported with transfer

  • it makes no sense to ask for the Location sheet to be editable, you've got the stock overview for that. If you want to consume do so, if you want to add you need to enter information one by one so you can't do it in a batch.

  • If you want only to check if an ingredient exist but don't want to consume it select Only check if a single unit is in stock (a different quantity can then be used above).
  • Marcar bayetas como abiertas para recordarte que tienes que cambiarla
  • Common userfields should go together
  • Acelga o lechuga dificil de medir por raciones o piezas, tirar de gramos
  • Use stock units accordingly on how you consume them. 1 ration = ½ lemon, and adjust the recipes accordingly.
  • For example the acelgas are saved as pieces, lettuce, as two rations per piece, spinach bought as kg and saved as rations
  • Important to specify the location, as you'll use it later for the inventory review
  • IF you don't know the rations per kilogram, use kilograms till you know it.
  • Buy unit the one you are going to encounter in the supermarket, both to input in purchase and to see the evolution of price.
  • In the shops only put the ones you want to buy to, even if in others the product is available
  • Things like the spices add them to recipes without consuming stock, and once you see you are low on the spice consume the rations
  • In the things that are so light that 0.01 means a lot, change the buying unit to the equivalent x1000, even if you have to use other unit that is not the buying unit (species case)
  • When you don't still have the complete inventory and you are cooking with someone, annotate in a paper the recipe or at least the elements it needs and afterwards transfer them to grocy.
  • Evaluate the use of sublocations in grocy, like Freezer:Drawer 1.
  • For products that are in two places, (fregadero and stock), consume the stock one instead of consuming the other and transfering the product.
  • Adapt the due days of the fresh products that don't have it.
  • If you hit enter in any field it commits the product (product description, purchase)

Issues⚑

References⚑