Organising shopping in a flat share

Model 1: everything separate

Everyone buys and cooks for themselves. This causes little conflict among people with different eating habits. Only household items such as cleaning products, loo roll, bin bags and spices are paid for jointly.

Model 2: shared basics

Staples such as oil, pasta, rice, spices and drinks belong to everyone, and the rest is private. For that you need a list where everyone writes what is missing. The ManaWG shopping list is shared: whoever shops ticks items off and can then record the shop as an expense straight away.

Example: shared basics in a flat of four

Lena, Tom, Sara and Ben share the basics: cleaning products, loo roll, bin bags and dishwasher tablets. This month Lena buys cleaning products and loo roll for €20, Tom buys bin bags for €12 and Sara buys dishwasher tablets for €16. Ben buys nothing this time. That is €48 in total, so each share is €12. Lena has paid €8 too much, Sara €4, Tom exactly his share, and Ben is €12 short. He transfers €8 to Lena and €4 to Sara, and no more transfers are needed. The amounts are made-up examples. In the app, each person enters their shopping as an expense and picks all four as people involved, and ManaWG shows the balance and the settlements.

Model 3: cooking and shopping together

If you eat together, it is worth taking turns to do the shopping. You split the cost among the people taking part. Someone who only occasionally joins in pays only then. You can set that per expense.

What belongs in the shared shopping

• Cleaning products and washing-up liquid, sponges and cloths
• Loo roll, kitchen roll, bin bags
• Salt, pepper, oil, vinegar and basic spices
• Coffee, tea, sugar, if everyone takes from them
• Light bulbs, smoke alarm batteries, dishwasher tablets

Dividing up the fridge and shelves

If you shop separately, you need fixed places: one fridge shelf and one cupboard shelf per person, plus a shared shelf for shared items. Anyone may take what is on the shared shelf, and everything else only after asking. Once a week, the person on kitchen duty goes through the fridge and throws out anything past its date.

Finding a rhythm

Many flat shares do well with one fixed big shop a week for the basics and small top-up shops as needed. One person does the big shop in turn, and everyone fills the list beforehand. Anyone who is at the shop anyway sees in the shared list what is missing and brings it back.

Keeping an eye on supplies

Pasta bought twice and empty spice jars are signs of a missing overview. A supplies area shows what is running low. In ManaWG, supplies suggest what you should buy and add it to the shopping list.

Settling up without paper chaos

Receipts left in the kitchen get lost. Better to enter amounts in the app straight away. During an import, a photo or screenshot of an expense list can be read using text recognition and corrected before saving. At the end of the month, the balance shows who owes whom how much. How a shared kitty works is covered in the household kitty.