Shelf Stable Food Flow: Avoiding Food Waste

I have a system I've developed over time, of ways to store shelf-stable foods. It's a system to help me to waste less food. I move things from bigger canisters to smaller, until I get to pints. Then I have a crate full of jelly jars that lives at the end of my cutting board next to the stove. That's the "ends" and they're there to be used first. The odd bits of pasta, breakfast cereal, dry beans, tea, grains etc. All go there.

On a pullout, I have the same sort of thing for produce: a small basket holds the onions, potatoes, shallots and garlic that need to be used next. It lives in the cabinet, so limited sunlight.

Without these, I threw out a lot more food!

So my question: what do you do to store foods and waste less? How do you keep track or do you? (I don't.)

TIA!

Great idea! What I do is put the items in the pantry, then shove more things on top and push things back to make more room, until it all collapses any time I open the door.

Great idea! What I do is put the items in the pantry, then shove more things on top and push things back to make more room, until it all collapses any time I open the door

Me too!! this is how I organize my linen closet!!

After decades of producing our own food, we still have not found a system we really like. We are getting better, but I am pretty sure food ...though not wasted...is still not being put to it's best use.

Dustin Rhodes wrote:



Me too!! this is how I organize my linen closet!!

Its a good all-around strategy.  😁

My system is very similar to yours, Jennie. I have buckets of grain and beans and big jars of dried fruit in the woodshed until we get a root cellar built. I fill up quart jars to keep in the kitchen. Some things, like chickpeas, that we use a lot of have a bigger jar for the kitchen.

One of only two vegetables we store a lot of is potatoes. I'm hoping to have more success with carrots and beets next year, though. Potatoes get stored in my garbage can root cellar and I bring in a kilo or two at a time in a paper bag that gets stored in a cool corner of the kitchen in a bin under the counter.

We do have a few jars of dried leafy greens that get used in winter cooking that stay in the kitchen and always get used up every year. Mostly we eat fresh out of the garden and supplement with sprouts, microgreens, and store bought for the winter when the coldframes get sparse.

I need a better system for squash storage. I have a lot of spoilage right now because I don't have a cool place to store them.

That sounds like a good system. My approach wavers somewhere between the organizational extremes of "spreadsheet for everything" and "booby trapped pantry: good luck with that." Sometimes it varies by area, sometimes by non-kitchen-related life context. I do try to pull things from the back, though I'm not 100% on it.

The one thing I do keep track of is my spices and herb supplies. I almost always buy bulk (when I don't grow and dehydrate) and then break the big bags down into vacuum-sealed smaller containers. They tend to get tucked here and there, so I started noting down what I've stashed where in a little steno pad. It helps. Somewhat.

Once a year or so I go through the home-canned stuff and make sure it's rotated. Ditto emergency supplies like powdered milk.