Hawkins, a third-year English Literature major and self-described “junkie for the printed word,” started collecting discarded shopping lists while walking the aisles at her part-time job at a Toronto Loblaws store.

“At first it was just a hobby, but I got to thinking, perhaps there are treasures hidden in these lists people throw away,” Hawkins says.

“When I really started to analyze them, what jumped out at me was how incredibly efficient many of these people are. Because I’m so familiar with the store, I can see how they’ve itemized their lists to correspond to the precise layout. They don’t want to waste time doubling back for anything.”

She's even seen some shopping lists that are typed and alphabetized.

Her collection, hundreds of lists gathered over the past year and a half, has turned into a serious quest to comprehend the seemingly arcane, scribbled notes – she’s written an article about the phenomenon, and is planning a book on the subject.

Hawkins has also noticed many lists that look as if they belong to a woman – with flowery notepaper and feminine handwriting – but upon closer inspection, tell a different story about who’s doing the shopping.

“A lot of the lists seem to be written by a woman for someone else, a husband or a boyfriend,”
she says.

Then there are the bizarre lists that contain seemingly random items.

“Those are the most amusing,” says Hawkins. “For example, one customer added, ‘Get mints for pillows.’ You’ve got to wonder what’s going on there.”

One of her favourites is "The Bridget Jones of lists" -- loopy handwriting on a scrap of girly stationery that hastily lists the staples of a 'singleton,' "water, cauli, pickles, catfood."

“Often there’s a certain serendipity to it,” she says. “Sometimes I’m just walking down the aisle and I hit the jackpot and find tons of them. Other days it’s pretty slim pickings I have to dig through the trash – not that I go rummaging way down deep in there or try to separate the ones that are stuck together with gum.”

To amass her collection, Hawkins relies on the help of a coterie of “’research assistants’ – mostly buggy boys,” who are on the lookout for lists left in shopping cards or lying in puddles in the parking lot. She’s hoping to broaden her sampling by collecting from other area stores.

“Geography and socio-economic status of course play a large role in what people buy, so it will be interesting to see results from other stores,” Hawkins says.

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For further information, please contact:

Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University, 416-736-2100 x22097/ mehughes@yorku.ca