Keeping a freezer inventory on paper
habits5 min
Not a recipe. A system that stopped me buying a fourth bag of peas.
For two years I threw away food I had bought twice. The freezer is a black box: things go in labelled with good intentions and come out as anonymous white bricks.
The list
A sheet of paper taped to the freezer door. Two columns: what, and roughly when it went in. Crossed out when taken. Rewritten cleanly maybe every two months.
I tried three apps first. All of them failed at the same point: the moment of putting food in the freezer is a moment when your hands are cold, full, and in a hurry. Unlocking a phone loses to a pencil on a string every time.
What it changed
- Stock rotates. The oldest thing on the list becomes dinner on the night nobody wants to cook.
- Portioning got better once I could see that "one large container of soup" is never eaten, and four small ones always are.
- Shopping got shorter, because the answer to "do we have any?" is on the door.
The only rule that matters: write it down before you close the door.
Later never happens.
Written