One shopping list for a renovation, across every store

Why renovation shopping sprawls

The vanity is from a big-box home improvement store, the tile from a specialist, the faucet from wherever had the finish you wanted, the tools and odds and ends from Amazon, and a light fixture from a small shop someone found on Instagram. Each store has its own cart that expires, and none of them knows about the others.

So the plan ends up in a spreadsheet, a notes app, a group chat, and a contractor's printout, all slightly different. The question that actually matters — what does all of this come to — gets answered from memory.

One cart per project

Make a cart for each project: “Main bathroom”, “Kitchen backsplash”, “Deck”. Everything for that project goes in it, from whichever store it came from.

• Items are grouped by store, with a subtotal for each — useful when you're deciding what to order online and what to pick up in one trip.
• Quantities are part of the item, so four boxes of tile are four boxes in the total, not one.
• Things you're still weighing can be saved for later, so the cart stays a list of decisions and the second-choice vanity doesn't inflate the total.
• Save things however you find them: paste a link, use the Chrome extension on the product page, or ask ChatGPT or Claude to add something to the project's cart.

Share it with whoever is deciding

Invite your partner with edit access and you're both working from the same list. Invite a contractor or designer too, if that helps — an invitation can grant view-only access, or the ability to add and edit, and you can change or revoke it later.

A shared cart is one list, not a copy. When someone adds the grout, marks the faucet bought, or removes the tile you both went off, everyone sees it. An invitation is to one cart; nothing else in your Tote is visible to them.

The total, and what it leaves out

Tote's total counts only prices it has confirmed. If some items have no price yet, the total says so — “9 of 12 items priced” — rather than quietly treating them as free. That matters on a renovation, where the unpriced items are often the expensive ones.

Some stores don't show their prices to Tote. When you paste a link, Tote's servers fetch the page the way a link preview does, and not every store answers: Lowe's blocks the request outright, and Amazon sends the page without a price in it. Home improvement stores vary, and they change their pages without notice.

• Save from those stores with the Chrome extension, which reads the page as you see it in your own browser — often the only place the price appears.
• Or type the price in yourself. It takes a few seconds, and your total is right from then on.
• Where an item has no price, Tote may show a price estimate — what other stores sell the same or a similar item for — clearly marked as not that store's price and never added to your total.

Before you order

Fixtures, tools and fittings are often sold by several stores at different prices. Open an item and Tote checks other sellers for the same product, labeling each result as the same product or only similar, and showing nothing it didn't actually find. On a list of thirty items, a handful of those are usually worth a look.

For big-ticket items you aren't buying yet — the vanity, the tub, an appliance — Tote+ can keep checking the price at the store you chose and tell you when it drops, as long as that store's page shows Tote a price.

As things arrive

Mark items purchased as you buy them and the cart shrinks to what's left, which is the list you actually need on a Saturday morning. Purchases move into your history rather than disappearing, so when the next room comes around you're starting from what you actually bought last time.

Common questions

Can I check out at Home Depot or Lowe's through Tote?

No. Tote has no checkout and never takes payment. It links you to each store's own product page and you buy there, with that store's prices, delivery and returns.

Can my contractor add to the list?

Yes, if you invite them with edit access. You can also give view-only access, and remove them when the job is done.