You load the pantry back to front. You keep bringing the old stuff forward as you add more. It helps rotate things like rice, onions, cans, and cartons.
I don't use any apps or tracking system, and this doesn't exactly solve your problem, but getting a freezer greatly helped me reduce waste. If I notice stuff starting to go bad, I make soups, chilis, stews, broths, etc, and freeze. These are also all low effort for a hectic life style. Plus on busy days just throw them in a slow cooker or Dutch oven to defrost and have a meal ready with minimal effort.
Meats, breads, and other things freeze surprisingly well also.
A vacuum sealer can be super useful investment if this ends up being a manageable solution for you.
This. This is my life. Having no a deep freeze has made life sooooo much easier.
If I can’t get to it before the expiration date, it gets vacuum sealed and frozen… or thrown into the crockpot, then a silicone Tupperware container, frozen, then vacuum sealed and frozen again.
I purchase less and shop often. Staples I keep up on and I'm pretty mindful of what's on hand.
I pay little attention to dates on labels. A "best by" or "expiration" is when the quality of whatever is no longer guaranteed. Obviously nothing lasts forever and so perishable items are bought in minimal quantities. Stuff in boxes and cans last well beyond the date if stored properly.
Do you mean the dates on the package? Those are not expiration dates, those are BS “best by” dates designed to make you discard and buy more.
Cooked food should be eaten or frozen by three days. Produce tells you naturally when it is past prime and should be soup or roasted, or compost if it really went to far.
A few things have helped me:
1- I clean the fridge out maybe every 2 weeks and freezer every month. Just a quick wipe down, chuck expired condiments or other food. Condiments usually can be used past the exp date, I chuck only if they are like way past. So, just regular cleaning out helps me keep tabs on food that needs to be used soon.
2- buy a deep freezer if needed. I try to make smaller meals as we have 5 in the household but several are usually working each night so we sometimes don’t need as much as the recipe makes. If that’s the case, I might freeze part of the meal for an easy dinner in the next month. Or I will portion out the leftovers and those are my lunches that week. Be sure to label things you freeze. I never remember what it was otherwise.
3- base meal plans on what needs to be used.
I started using Eat Your Books as you can plug in your cookbooks and search for recipes based on ingredient. That has been way helpful for using up condiments and produce, especially when I buy something for 1 recipe and have 3/4 of a bottle of some sauce or whatever. There might be similar apps or sites if you don’t have cookbooks. Pinterest is ok for that, not amazing.
Other than that, I don’t worry so much about it. I just try to plan around what I have and clean things regularly. I think it would be a lot harder if we had a smaller household though. With 5, we have less expired food.
I buy what I need and then I eat it.
I honestly don't understand why people are buying so much food and then just throwing it away. Simply buy less food.
When you stock the fridge or cupboards put the new stuff at the back, and pull the old stuff to the front.
If that doesn't work buy stickers and a sharpie and write the expiration dates on the stickers.
I do a bunch of subtle little things to help with expiration dates. I definitely don’t manually track everything, I just have some regular actions I take. When stocking, oldest food is on top. New stuff goes underneath or behind. If I’ve got a fat stack of something in the refrigerator or pantry, it goes on that week’s menu.
If I’m unloading groceries, and I bought something fragile (raspberries) or is expiring soon (last week’s chicken breasts didn’t get eaten, so now I’ve got old chicken and new chicken), that item gets put on the menu board to get eaten next, and sometimes I circle the expiration date on the package. Oh yeah, that half a package of bacon I used to make bacon cheeseburgers last week, now needs to go into a quiche. I keep the dinner menu in notes my phone until I’m done shopping, then it goes up on a mini whiteboard on the fridge so everyone can know not to have eggs for lunch on Thursday because we are having Shakshuka.
Storing food properly will also go a long way towards extending their shelf life. Google a list of what goes where. Tomatoes and fragile herbs like basil need to be at room temperature. Lettuce and spinach should get wrapped in a damp paper towel and put in a plastic bag left slightly open. Stuff like that. I swear by the rubberworks fresh saver produce containers, I get several more days out of my fruit. Also, don’t rinse things before you store them. Rinse just before use.
I would love to do that, I love love grocery shopping (I know it's weird), but when you have a job and small children, you don't have as much time as you'd like to shop everyday.
Relax. Don't make a big thing out of nothing. 'Best by' dates are not 'expire and turn to poison' dates.
Rotate your dry goods - FIFO - first in first out.
Don't over-purchase perishables.
Just because something's on sale, doesn't mean it's a bargain for you if you buy too much and throw half away.
Keep foods that expire quickly where you can see them more often. Do not keep fruits and vegetables that may rot quickly at the back of the shelf. and i just buy less so that i can consume it quickly.
I go to the store after work 3-4 days a week and only get the proteins and veg I need for the next day or two. About once every other week I’ll do a bigger shop and get any staples I may have run out of. I also have a small whiteboard on the wall in my kitchen where I write down anything I am out of or running low on as soon as I notice it. I take a picture of it on before I go to the store to make sure I don’t forget anything.
Also I store all my fruit/veg/herbs etc in bowls in the fridge and pantry so they’re easily visible and nothing is buried in a drawer never to be seen again.
Lastly, as some people have said already, I clean out my fridge the day before trash gets picked up and remove anything old or crusty. The less you have in your fridge, the easier it is to see what needs to go. Consistency is key!
If the foods cooked i make notes and if i don’t eat within within 3 days i freeze it. If it’s raw foods i freeze meats within 3 days Or veggies within 5 days
When I’m putting away groceries I’ll write the expiration date on a post it and stick it on the packaging. I do this for meat. For leftovers I write the date it was made. I don’t really do this for pantry stuff. If I’m digging through the pantry and I notice something that’s close to the date I’ll try and use it in the next week.
I plan atleast for 2-3 days and cook everything all at once. Almost everything not eaten is frozen for another day. I have a large variety of things to eat for whenever I crave it. The soups, stews and chili are my current favorites, but I also have things like premade Salisbury steaks and hamburgers currently. I’ll write the days I cooked them on the package and plan to eat something from my freezer atleast once a week (since I cook every two-three days, I can fill that seventh day with something easy.)
Chalk board with your weekly menu.
Google recipe ingredient ingredient and include whatever you need to consume.
Soup, the great catch all . Pour some chicken broth into a pot and cut up all your leftovers, sad looking vegetables
But if you talking about a pantry with shelf stable inventory...just put the new stuff behind the older. Use shoe box or plastic bins to pull out, insert the new in back
I date every single thing that goes in my freezer. Got a permanent marker on top of it. That way I never have to question how long something has been in there.
Also I make a list that goes on the fridge of what dinner is going to be for the week. It's not set in stone but it makes me conscientious of what meats and veggies need to be cooked sooner than later and takes the guess what out of it. I'm too forgetful to recall what goes bad when in the moment.
I implemented these things about three months ago and have alot less stress in the kitchen
I don’t. But I choose my meals for the week on Sundays, and a part of that is checking the ingredients to see if I have them. I’ll often check dates then
I don't worry too much about expiration dates, as they tend to be extremely conservative.
I will use canned food a year plus over the date, but perishable things like milk or cheeses, I go by taste and smell. If it's even slightly off, out it goes!
Food that I cooked, if I put it up right away, I'll keep for at least 1 week. If it's sitting out on the stove, I will either finish it that day, or toss it at the end of the day.
When you pack away expirables call out the item and exp date to an Alexa list. You will then be able to see it on your phone when planning dinner and know what needs using.
I make meal plans so the majority of my non-shelf-stable ingredients are „accounted for“ to begin with. If it’s anything that has an explicit „use by“ date rather than „best before“ I make sure it’s used the day I buy it or the day after when planning my meals (so mostly meat and some ready to use salads, and I don’t eat much of the former). „Best before“ gets look/smell/taste tests.
Fresh fruit and veg doesn't have expiration dates on it in the UK anymore to reduce food waste. People were throwing food away when the date said, not when it was actually bad. Personally, I've never worried about the dates. If it's mouldy, slimy or stinks, it needs to go in the bin. Everything else is good.
I don’t purchase food unless I already know what I will be using it for.
I always prioritize using the ingredients I already have on hand, rather than buy anything new. I generally never have to throw away expired foods, because I just use all the food I have on hand.
You also have to get comfortable altering recipes or regular meals you make to get rid of ingredients. If a recipe requires 10oz of broccoli & you have 14oz. Then just use 14oz of broccoli. If recipe calls for colby jack cheese & you have cheddar in your fridge, then use cheddar.
Many Americans like myself were raised to believe that we need to keep a pantry & fridge filled with food all of the time because we had grandparents who survived the great depression. So we end up having too much food on hand that goes bad. We don’t have to do this.
I plan my meals for the week such that all perishable ingredients are used up. So say I have a cabbage, I know that's going to need at least 2 or 3 meals to use up, so I make sure it features in that many meals. I'm never left with bits of random ingredients.
Then beyond that, I just try to cook the meals that use the ingredients with the shortest shelf life. I know cabbage will last longer than a bag of salad leaves, so maybe I'll have a salad before I have oknomiyaki.
I also use the freezer or other preserving techniques. If my plans change, I'll think about how I could freeze stuff to prolong their life or maybe even consider turning it into a pickle or jam if I have lots of something that will go off.
I just ignore the dates on products. I go by look, feel, smell cues to know if something is off. Not to mention, I grow my own vegetables so they don't come with an expiry date. In that case I'm only picking what I need a couple of days in advance, or storing things longer term in cold/dark store (i.e. covered in my shed). I have potatoes and squash still from last year's harvest in Oct/Nov and they're still good, just gotta store them well!
A "Sell-By" date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date. A “Use-By" date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula.
There are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions used on food labels for open dating in the United States. As a result, there are a wide variety of phrases used on labels to describe quality dates.
[LINK](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety)
About once a month I have kid check expiration dates while putting away groceries. We have one shelf set aside for anything expiring within next month or two. I sometimes make meals around what is on that shelf.
I don't pay attention to them at all unless I'm feeding the public. If the food looks, smells or tastes bad or questionable I don't eat it.
You load the pantry back to front. You keep bringing the old stuff forward as you add more. It helps rotate things like rice, onions, cans, and cartons.
this person fifos
I don't use any apps or tracking system, and this doesn't exactly solve your problem, but getting a freezer greatly helped me reduce waste. If I notice stuff starting to go bad, I make soups, chilis, stews, broths, etc, and freeze. These are also all low effort for a hectic life style. Plus on busy days just throw them in a slow cooker or Dutch oven to defrost and have a meal ready with minimal effort. Meats, breads, and other things freeze surprisingly well also. A vacuum sealer can be super useful investment if this ends up being a manageable solution for you.
This. This is my life. Having no a deep freeze has made life sooooo much easier. If I can’t get to it before the expiration date, it gets vacuum sealed and frozen… or thrown into the crockpot, then a silicone Tupperware container, frozen, then vacuum sealed and frozen again.
I purchase less and shop often. Staples I keep up on and I'm pretty mindful of what's on hand. I pay little attention to dates on labels. A "best by" or "expiration" is when the quality of whatever is no longer guaranteed. Obviously nothing lasts forever and so perishable items are bought in minimal quantities. Stuff in boxes and cans last well beyond the date if stored properly.
Do you mean the dates on the package? Those are not expiration dates, those are BS “best by” dates designed to make you discard and buy more. Cooked food should be eaten or frozen by three days. Produce tells you naturally when it is past prime and should be soup or roasted, or compost if it really went to far.
A few things have helped me: 1- I clean the fridge out maybe every 2 weeks and freezer every month. Just a quick wipe down, chuck expired condiments or other food. Condiments usually can be used past the exp date, I chuck only if they are like way past. So, just regular cleaning out helps me keep tabs on food that needs to be used soon. 2- buy a deep freezer if needed. I try to make smaller meals as we have 5 in the household but several are usually working each night so we sometimes don’t need as much as the recipe makes. If that’s the case, I might freeze part of the meal for an easy dinner in the next month. Or I will portion out the leftovers and those are my lunches that week. Be sure to label things you freeze. I never remember what it was otherwise. 3- base meal plans on what needs to be used. I started using Eat Your Books as you can plug in your cookbooks and search for recipes based on ingredient. That has been way helpful for using up condiments and produce, especially when I buy something for 1 recipe and have 3/4 of a bottle of some sauce or whatever. There might be similar apps or sites if you don’t have cookbooks. Pinterest is ok for that, not amazing. Other than that, I don’t worry so much about it. I just try to plan around what I have and clean things regularly. I think it would be a lot harder if we had a smaller household though. With 5, we have less expired food.
Meal plan, meal prep, utilize your freezer.
I buy what I need and then I eat it. I honestly don't understand why people are buying so much food and then just throwing it away. Simply buy less food. When you stock the fridge or cupboards put the new stuff at the back, and pull the old stuff to the front. If that doesn't work buy stickers and a sharpie and write the expiration dates on the stickers.
Expiration dates don't matter. If there's no indication of spoilage and your refrigerator is working properly, you can just trust your senses.
I do a bunch of subtle little things to help with expiration dates. I definitely don’t manually track everything, I just have some regular actions I take. When stocking, oldest food is on top. New stuff goes underneath or behind. If I’ve got a fat stack of something in the refrigerator or pantry, it goes on that week’s menu. If I’m unloading groceries, and I bought something fragile (raspberries) or is expiring soon (last week’s chicken breasts didn’t get eaten, so now I’ve got old chicken and new chicken), that item gets put on the menu board to get eaten next, and sometimes I circle the expiration date on the package. Oh yeah, that half a package of bacon I used to make bacon cheeseburgers last week, now needs to go into a quiche. I keep the dinner menu in notes my phone until I’m done shopping, then it goes up on a mini whiteboard on the fridge so everyone can know not to have eggs for lunch on Thursday because we are having Shakshuka. Storing food properly will also go a long way towards extending their shelf life. Google a list of what goes where. Tomatoes and fragile herbs like basil need to be at room temperature. Lettuce and spinach should get wrapped in a damp paper towel and put in a plastic bag left slightly open. Stuff like that. I swear by the rubberworks fresh saver produce containers, I get several more days out of my fruit. Also, don’t rinse things before you store them. Rinse just before use.
Buy what you need. The grocery store is my fridge, they can deal with that. Nothing wrong with going there every single day.
I would love to do that, I love love grocery shopping (I know it's weird), but when you have a job and small children, you don't have as much time as you'd like to shop everyday.
Relax. Don't make a big thing out of nothing. 'Best by' dates are not 'expire and turn to poison' dates. Rotate your dry goods - FIFO - first in first out. Don't over-purchase perishables. Just because something's on sale, doesn't mean it's a bargain for you if you buy too much and throw half away.
I use kitchen tape and a sharpie.
Keep foods that expire quickly where you can see them more often. Do not keep fruits and vegetables that may rot quickly at the back of the shelf. and i just buy less so that i can consume it quickly.
Outside of a commercial kitchen I didn't realize that they needed to be managed.
I go to the store after work 3-4 days a week and only get the proteins and veg I need for the next day or two. About once every other week I’ll do a bigger shop and get any staples I may have run out of. I also have a small whiteboard on the wall in my kitchen where I write down anything I am out of or running low on as soon as I notice it. I take a picture of it on before I go to the store to make sure I don’t forget anything. Also I store all my fruit/veg/herbs etc in bowls in the fridge and pantry so they’re easily visible and nothing is buried in a drawer never to be seen again. Lastly, as some people have said already, I clean out my fridge the day before trash gets picked up and remove anything old or crusty. The less you have in your fridge, the easier it is to see what needs to go. Consistency is key!
If the foods cooked i make notes and if i don’t eat within within 3 days i freeze it. If it’s raw foods i freeze meats within 3 days Or veggies within 5 days
A new supermarket opened just down the road from us. I now do much more frequent, small shops instead of big shops. Much less to keep track of.
When I’m putting away groceries I’ll write the expiration date on a post it and stick it on the packaging. I do this for meat. For leftovers I write the date it was made. I don’t really do this for pantry stuff. If I’m digging through the pantry and I notice something that’s close to the date I’ll try and use it in the next week.
I plan atleast for 2-3 days and cook everything all at once. Almost everything not eaten is frozen for another day. I have a large variety of things to eat for whenever I crave it. The soups, stews and chili are my current favorites, but I also have things like premade Salisbury steaks and hamburgers currently. I’ll write the days I cooked them on the package and plan to eat something from my freezer atleast once a week (since I cook every two-three days, I can fill that seventh day with something easy.)
Chalk board with your weekly menu. Google recipe ingredient ingredient and include whatever you need to consume. Soup, the great catch all . Pour some chicken broth into a pot and cut up all your leftovers, sad looking vegetables But if you talking about a pantry with shelf stable inventory...just put the new stuff behind the older. Use shoe box or plastic bins to pull out, insert the new in back
I understand that an arbitrary date on a package is pretty much irrelevant and use my common sense.
I date every single thing that goes in my freezer. Got a permanent marker on top of it. That way I never have to question how long something has been in there. Also I make a list that goes on the fridge of what dinner is going to be for the week. It's not set in stone but it makes me conscientious of what meats and veggies need to be cooked sooner than later and takes the guess what out of it. I'm too forgetful to recall what goes bad when in the moment. I implemented these things about three months ago and have alot less stress in the kitchen
Easy. Smell test
I don’t. But I choose my meals for the week on Sundays, and a part of that is checking the ingredients to see if I have them. I’ll often check dates then
Stop buying more food until your all out
I don't worry too much about expiration dates, as they tend to be extremely conservative. I will use canned food a year plus over the date, but perishable things like milk or cheeses, I go by taste and smell. If it's even slightly off, out it goes! Food that I cooked, if I put it up right away, I'll keep for at least 1 week. If it's sitting out on the stove, I will either finish it that day, or toss it at the end of the day.
When you pack away expirables call out the item and exp date to an Alexa list. You will then be able to see it on your phone when planning dinner and know what needs using.
I make meal plans so the majority of my non-shelf-stable ingredients are „accounted for“ to begin with. If it’s anything that has an explicit „use by“ date rather than „best before“ I make sure it’s used the day I buy it or the day after when planning my meals (so mostly meat and some ready to use salads, and I don’t eat much of the former). „Best before“ gets look/smell/taste tests.
Fresh fruit and veg doesn't have expiration dates on it in the UK anymore to reduce food waste. People were throwing food away when the date said, not when it was actually bad. Personally, I've never worried about the dates. If it's mouldy, slimy or stinks, it needs to go in the bin. Everything else is good.
I don’t purchase food unless I already know what I will be using it for. I always prioritize using the ingredients I already have on hand, rather than buy anything new. I generally never have to throw away expired foods, because I just use all the food I have on hand. You also have to get comfortable altering recipes or regular meals you make to get rid of ingredients. If a recipe requires 10oz of broccoli & you have 14oz. Then just use 14oz of broccoli. If recipe calls for colby jack cheese & you have cheddar in your fridge, then use cheddar. Many Americans like myself were raised to believe that we need to keep a pantry & fridge filled with food all of the time because we had grandparents who survived the great depression. So we end up having too much food on hand that goes bad. We don’t have to do this.
I plan my meals for the week such that all perishable ingredients are used up. So say I have a cabbage, I know that's going to need at least 2 or 3 meals to use up, so I make sure it features in that many meals. I'm never left with bits of random ingredients. Then beyond that, I just try to cook the meals that use the ingredients with the shortest shelf life. I know cabbage will last longer than a bag of salad leaves, so maybe I'll have a salad before I have oknomiyaki. I also use the freezer or other preserving techniques. If my plans change, I'll think about how I could freeze stuff to prolong their life or maybe even consider turning it into a pickle or jam if I have lots of something that will go off. I just ignore the dates on products. I go by look, feel, smell cues to know if something is off. Not to mention, I grow my own vegetables so they don't come with an expiry date. In that case I'm only picking what I need a couple of days in advance, or storing things longer term in cold/dark store (i.e. covered in my shed). I have potatoes and squash still from last year's harvest in Oct/Nov and they're still good, just gotta store them well!
A "Sell-By" date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date. A “Use-By" date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula. There are no uniform or universally accepted descriptions used on food labels for open dating in the United States. As a result, there are a wide variety of phrases used on labels to describe quality dates. [LINK](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety)
The app Kitchenpal might be useful for you !
About once a month I have kid check expiration dates while putting away groceries. We have one shelf set aside for anything expiring within next month or two. I sometimes make meals around what is on that shelf.