If you have ever worked in a store then you know how long and monotonous it is to do inventory of your stock! At home, I find it way different! At home, I enjoy the process a bit more because I know there will be a direct benefit to knowing what food or consumables I have on hand. There is no easy shortcut for taking your inventory, which is the downer.
You literally need to go through EVERYTHING!
Every shelf or drawer in the freezer, or all of your freezers! Every shelf in the pantry, every food keeping place in your kitchen, even your counters if you store fresh produce on the counter. The better you know everything you have, the better you can plan your grocery shop!
A while ago, I bought a massive roll of white board adhesive. I cut sections out of it to stick onto my main freezer. I would just write on the door with a white board marker but the door front is textured and I had visions of getting white board marker in all the grooves and never getting it off again. Hopefully, if I ever want to take off the white board it will come off easily, but who knows. I lay out my white board sticker according to place in the freezer so that my husband has an easier time finding food as well.
Like I said for the basement freezer I simply write on the door. It has a great smooth finish so is easy to wipe off as food gets consumed. Because my basement freezer has a fridge with it, I also check out the fridge to ensure we don’t waste anything down there. Often we have bricks of cheese, extra eggs, sometimes large boxes of yogurt cups, so we want to make sure they get accounted for in the meal plan before they expire. Sometimes, if I have a lot in the basement fridge I will write on a magnetic white board and then stick it to my upstairs fridge so that I remember what I actually have in the basement.
I use my inventory lists and my meal planning/picking to figure out what I actually need to buy from the grocery store. Most of the time I don’t actually need that much which has been surprising. It’s usually mostly fresh fruit and veggies.
Now that I know what I have, I can use my new bins to organize my freezer….and plan my meals! Stay tuned for next week!! I am so excited!!
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