Two brilliant apps that organise my life

I use two great apps on my phone that really help me to organise myself, so I'm sharing them with you. Just to get it out of the way, they are both free (of course!) and no-one has asked/paid me to write about them.

The first app is called Our Groceries. It is basically a shopping list stored in your phone that you can add to when needed, then you have it with you when you are at the supermarket. It remembers everything that you have ever entered, so when you've been using it for a while it remembers your frequently purchased items and puts them at the top of a list to select from. You can also add items individually by typing them in. You can even enter recipes into the app with the ingredients required for that meal, so if you know what meals you want to make you can choose the recipe and then select the items that you need from the ingredients list.

The absolute best thing about the app is that you can link it up with other devices. I have an Android phone and my husband has an iPhone, and we both have the app installed. We can then share the list, so I can make it out and then send him shopping with it, and I can add forgotten things while he's on the way. You can store different lists, for example a regular list or a list for a special occasion like a barbecue or holiday. You can also group the items by category (which you can choose) so you can organise it to fit in with your trip around the supermarket, for example by grouping all the dairy products or toiletries together.

The second app is called Chore Checklist, and I use the free Lite version. Unfortunately, as far as I can see this is only available for Android phones. You can use it to organise the chores that need to be done around the house. It comes with some pre-set options, but you can edit it completely. You can choose the frequency with which a chore needs to be done, so you can set a Daily Routine, Weekly Routine, Monthly Routine and so on. Then every morning when you turn it on you have a list of tasks to complete that day. They start out as orange and then change to red if you don't do them. You can also skip chores or mark them as completed in retrospect. I find it much easier to keep up with housework by doing a little bit every day, and I can adapt it to fit around my non-working days. I am also very motivated by ticking things off lists! It takes a bit of time to set everything up, and you need to run through it for a while to make sure that the routine that you have come up with works for you. Then as a backup you can export the list of chores into an e-mail (or even share on Facebook or Twitter if you are so inclined!). I've not used the full version, as I find that the Lite version does everything that I need it to.

Can you recommend any apps that you use to make your life easier? Leave the name of the app(s) and a short description in the comments, and if enough people have one to share then I'll write them up in a carnival post!