# The list that never doubles back down an aisle

> A torn paper strip reading BREAD, APPLES, TINNED TOMATOES, WASHING POWDER and a crossed-out STAMPS — a list ordered by the shop's layout, not by memory.

August 22, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-list-you-write-in-the-order-of-the-shop

A torn strip of paper fills the chest, pinned flat to the wall like a piece of art rather than
folded into a pocket. In biro blue, one word to a line: BREAD. APPLES. TINNED TOMATOES. WASHING
POWDER. Under that, STAMPS, struck through once, nothing written to replace it.

The order looks random until you picture the shop. Then it isn't.

## Why is the list in this order and not the order the items were thought of?

Because the order follows the aisles, not the mind, and a list written the second way sends you
back down aisles you've already left.

Write a list as things occur to you and it comes out scrambled against the shop's actual layout —
bread first, then something from three aisles back, then apples, then something you passed twice.
Write it in the shop's own order instead and the walk through the shop becomes one straight line.
The list isn't describing what you need. It's describing a route.

## What does it actually take to write a list this way?

Knowing the shop by heart well enough that the order comes out right before you've set foot in it.

That's not a skill anyone teaches directly — it's what's left over after enough trips round the
same aisles that the layout stops being something you follow and starts being something you
already know, the same way [a reciprocity list keeps its own shorthand for who owes
what](/stories/the-reciprocity-list) without the shorthand ever being written down as a
key. The list only works because the person writing it already has the map.

## Why is STAMPS crossed out rather than erased or left off?

Because crossing it out keeps a record of a decision, where erasing it or never writing it down
would leave no trace that the decision was made at all.

A line through a word says: this was needed, then it wasn't, and both of those facts are worth
keeping visible on the same strip of paper. An item quietly dropped from a list looks the same as
an item that was never wanted. A struck-through one doesn't.

## Do I need permission to print a shopping list on a shirt?

No — a list of ordinary grocery items in someone's own handwriting isn't anyone's intellectual
property to license. There's no brand, no store name and no product mark reproduced here, just
plain words for plain things.

### Where a licence would actually apply

Only if a specific shop's own printed list pad or house branding appeared in the artwork — that
belongs to them. An invented list on an invented torn strip, like this one, needs nobody's
sign-off. Style has no owner. A work does.

## Does this route-first logic apply to lists other than groceries?

Anywhere a route repeats enough times to be memorised — a delivery round, a set of errands run in
the same order every week — the same logic holds: write the list to match the route and the route
gets shorter without changing a single stop. It's a different kind of fixed habit from [the
quarter-tank rule, which is about a threshold rather than a
sequence](/stories/the-quarter-tank-rule), but both are rules that keep paying off long
after nobody remembers deciding on them.

## Isn't reordering a list this precisely more effort than it saves?

Only the first few times, while the layout is still being learned consciously. After that the
order comes out right without being worked out — the list gets written in aisle order the same way
[a stamped tool handle gets reached for without checking the
stamp](/stories/his-tools-are-labelled), because the knowledge stopped being a decision
and became a habit a long time ago.

## Does it print well?

Yes — handwritten biro on a torn paper ground is exactly the kind of high-contrast mark that
survives being reduced to one ink.

Keep the lettering as real handwriting rather than a typeface, uneven line to line the way a real
list would be, and keep the strike-through a single clean stroke rather than a scribble — a
scribbled-out word fills in at print scale and stops reading as a crossed-out line at all.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the list at [JustOG](/) — what's on it, what's crossed off, whose handwriting it's in.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Five lines, one struck through, and the aisles they were written to match.