Food inventory management ?

Hi,

I've been keeping a certain amount of food in stock for a few years now. I've been doing it the simplest possible way : dry food (past, grains), in waterproof barrels.
Now I'd like to diversify what I keep in stock, with cans for instance. That implies keeping track of each item's expiration date.
I'm talking about keeping enough food for a few weeks, not tons of food. I live in a small appartment without much room anyway.


Is there any simple way to go about this ? With an excel sheet or something ? I've no idea how people have been doing this on farms before the computer age, but I guess there's got to be a way to manage a small stock without professional inventory management software.

Thank you in advance for your help.

I have always just keep my list in a 3 ring notebook.

If you only keep enough for a few weeks, just write the expiration date on the container in nice clear lettering, and rotate your stock as you use it, put the new stuff in back, use from the front.

I have tried inventorying my stock but I always fail at it. I have a lot though. I do date it all with sharpies so I can watch dates.

We store shelf-stable foods for immediate use, and for long-term resilience, all together in one big pantry. I think most of our canned goods, dry beans, and whole grains have 12+ months of shelf life, and anything with an unusually short life gets treated more like fresh produce, meaning we don't buy more than we need for a few weeks.

Still, it's easy to lose track of an item and let it expire, or to run out when you need it. We try to avoid this with a few simple rules:

- Shop with a list: The list hangs on the refrigerator with a pen attached. We make a meal plan for 1-2 weeks, and I only shop from the list. Sometimes, I'll notice an empty space on our shelves and realize we're low on an item - so I add it to the list. Or when I'm cooking, if I open the last jar of some item, I'll add it to the list. Sometimes I'll put "2x" or "4x" on the list, to remind me to get extra.

- First in, First out: new cans get placed behind old cans, and the old can gets pushed up front. When cooking, I grab from the front (the old can).

- When buying extra, double-check expiration dates: I usually move though the grocery store pretty quickly, rarely checking dates. But if I'm buying like... 4+ cans of something, I check and make sure they'll last. It's not uncommon for the grocery store to push old stock up to the front of the row!

I think this routine has prevented most things from gathering dust in our pantry, and we keep enough on hand to eat our 'normal' meals for a couple weeks, and to eat a limited version of our favorite recipes for a couple of months.

Maybe something else that helps, is I tend to buy the most versatile / base ingredients possible. I buy whole beans, not seasoned beans that only work in a certain dish. There's a "blackbean corn salsa" we like, but I usually just buy black beans, corn, and salsa separately. I have a sizable spice rack, but I never buy premixed / blends. This way we can make just about anything any time.

We repeat a lot of recipes, and use a lot of the same core ingredients, so I have a good sense of what our staples are.

The freezer ehhh.... is another story. I struggle to keep freezer inventory organized... :P

I use digital tools for many things in my life, but I find that my brain needs paper, pen, and open shelving to organize short term things like food.

To add to Aaron’s post, in my most recent  shopping trip I checked the expiration date of an item on the shelf.  It was two months out of date.  Now, I normally don’t get too concerned about expiration dates, but being two months over coming out of the store is a bit much for me.

Hi Pierre,
of course with an excel sheet it will be really accurate and easy to track. However , you still need to look at your sheet regularly, check the stock, update your sheet etc. But its a good way of managing it.

In my experience a clear visual organisation of your inventory helps a lot. this is how food cellars have looked for centuries. And where I live, if you visit the panrty of a farm, it is still done that way.

Here is a trick you might also like for your case (short term to mid term inventory) and that has always worked. Since the days long before the computer. It is just a small addition to Aarons post. Which really covers the general aproach already :

Arrange your food inventory visually very clearly. I do not know the space you have available where you live. But try to
arrange the canned foods separate from the dried foods, separate from liquids, separate from raw materials. Space them apart.
Then within each category arrange them also in a clear visible way . E.g. dried foods : rice, pasta, beans, lentils, nuts etc.
Like Aaron said : The oldest is always at the front.

The idea is that if you open the door to your pantry : you immediately find everything, see the stock levels of each food.

Once you have everything arranged, you automatically use up the oldest food AND you see immediately which "stack" is getting lower. So you already know what you need to fill up again. No need for keeping entire inventory lists.

I use a white board on the end of the shelves with the list of items / qty. It is easy to update as food goes in and out. If I had to look it up or update it on an electronic device, that sure would not happen in real time. I use the totals when I am setting up a bulk purchase. It has also been really interesting to see what I THOUGHT would be consumed over a particular time frame vs what ACTUALLY got used. Opinions vs data, sometimes massive difference!

And thanks for mentioning about expiration dates. Last week, Joel Salatin and Sina McCullough were talking about the difference between EXPIRATION dates (hard and fast do not consume after this - on baby formula, some meds etc) and BEST BY or USE BEFORE dates (suggestions of quality over time, but also motivated by manufacturers agenda toward repurchase, and contributing to food waste). In case anyone is interested:

News update on the food labeling topic: California and Food Label Requirements

" ...varying phrases on food packaging have long left shoppers unsure whether food is simply past its peak quality or unsafe to eat. The state is aiming to cut down on confusion — and the food waste it creates when people throw away food early — with a new food labeling law starting Wednesday.

It bans the use of “sell by” labels on food packaging, which experts say act as a guide for retailers on how long to display products on the shelves but are not an indicator of whether they are still safe to consume. Now, manufacturers selling food in California must use two standardized labels — a “Best if Used By” label for peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety....  Food manufacturers can choose to use either label or both"

Someone mentioned freezer storage. If it was only me, it would be easier, I admit. However, one year when I had control of the situation, I used the reusable grocery bags with labels attached to keep like, or similar, items together. So all the frozen raspberries went in one bag. Various packages of frozen veggies went into another. I had 5 or 6 bags on the go, but had difficulty keeping people around me seeing the benefits.

In the future if I try again, I will make sure the bags are distinctly different colours.

For the "veggie bag," I'd consider several smaller bags to keep various types separate.

I'd consider making up a bag for outside purchases, such as the bread Hubby likes to buy, as I think that would help him buy into the system.

The opinions vs data gap is real. I was convinced we ate a lot more lentils than we actually do, until I noticed bags from a couple of years ago still sitting at the back. Writing dates on things and actually rotating properly does more than any complicated system.

We practice first in, first out in our freezers which are mostly meats, some vegetables and fruits, and dry goods.  Almost everything in our freezers is waiting to be canned - even the meats.  Power loss is a real thing here in Arkansas . . . .
(There is also a magnetic toilet paper holder that has a large roll of 2"x4" labels on it, with an attached sharpie, stuck to the front of the freezer - everything gets visibly dated and id'd before entering a freezer.)

Glass jars of canned goods are visibly labeled also, are on the shelves in date order, and again, first in, first out.  I can a lot of "meals in a jar" that get warmed on the wood stove as needed. Visible accurate labels are our friends.  Even the winter squash on the floor and the sacks of root crops and smoked-cured meats hanging from the rafters have easy to see labels on them.

As for store bought cans of anything, we have purpose-built racks on the walls that new stuff goes in the top slot and the oldest stuff comes out the bottom slot . . . . One rack per whatever-it-may-be . . . . . This is stuff that we will share with neighbours at need as the use-by dates get closer, but will also support the two of us for a longer term zombie apocalypse supply chain failure situation.  

We don't stock up foods for "just in case."   Everything that we have is stuff we eat on the regular . . . We just have enough to last us for a bit - most of which we grow, hunt, harvest, and forage ourselves.  

Hope some part of this informaton is useful . . . .

Annie

I can definitely concur with folks who  mentioned having pantry shelves visually organized. I can open the cupboard and easily count how many bottles of olive oil I have (8 presently).  And I know the oldest is in the front. Same with peanut butter, canned beans, tomato products, etc. No bins, which just take up extra shelf space, a rare commodity for many of us. Most of my packet products get put in glass jars straight away, since I live in the south and insects can be a problem.

As far as expiration dates go, I tend to slide past the dates by maybe a year or so and keep using the product. Of course, I don't want to find a can of something from 2021, but the above process eliminates that possibility as I am using from my pantry on a daily basis.

The chest freezer is definitely a challenge, as many mentioned. Ours is less than half full, but we don't eat meat. It's mostly  cooked beans, homemade veggie broth, coffee, nuts, sometimes a bit of bagged fruit from the garden or store. Yogurt tubs make good containers with contents written on the lid, and they stack easily. Our freezer came with 3 baskets; the handles sit on the edge of the freezer just below the door. The basket part hangs down into the body of the freezer. They take up space, but make it easier to manage contents so I don't have to dig to the bottom for some little bag.

Once or twice while visiting relatives, I was directed to "just throw that in the freezer in the garage." I was greeted with an overwhelming mass of random packages of everything mixed together, along with loose grapes and whole unpeeled bananas floating freely. It actually made me anxious, thinking about whatever was lurking down in the depths and how long it had been there.

I love the idea of visual organization, but my entire house is only 42 square meters and storage goes wherever I can squeeze it in!

In the past I've tried lists but it's become like this over time: I have an 'overflow' cabinet in my kitchen and another one outside on my back porch.

Things that will be needed soon (refills of things running low) or that might get buggy if left in my outdoor storage are kept in the inside overflow cabinet: opens on the top shelf and closed packages or breakables on the bottom shelf.
Things that are well-closed and not likely to get buggy are kept in the outside cabinet.
That outside cabinet also holds bulkier things like shelf-stable milk (how we buy it here in my corner of South America) and 5kg bags of flour or sugar.

I also have a spice overflow drawer, since I refill all my spice containers and I can't deal with 50 little baggies floating around the overflow cabinets making everything into a huge stinky mess. Those little bags are put into a square tupperware that occupies a corner of the drawer where I store my Asian dry goods (dried shrimp and fish, nori, coagulant for tofu, seaweeds, etc) and other cooking supplies I don't use as often like pickling lime, cheese salt, etc.
There is also an herb/tea overflow container in my tea cabinet, since I know that cabinet is very dry and a good place to keep extra tea to refill my containers.

Yes, someone else might need some help if they wanted to know where things are. And yes, occasionally I find something I didn't know I had, or realize I'm out-out of something I thought I had a backup of. For this last reason specifically, every year I do make an effort to clean them all out and if anything is lingering, make a list so I can use it up in a timely manner.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Yes, someone else might need some help if they wanted to know where things are. And yes, occasionally I find something I didn't know I had, or realize I'm out-out of something I thought I had a backup of. For this last reason specifically, every year I do make an effort to clean them all out and if anything is lingering, make a list so I can use it up in a timely manner.

This annual check is a good idea - it can go along with all the other things on the annual permie calendar, with the tasks to be done each month.... it seems SO obvious but I have never added this as a task to my annual calendar. I will now, so thanks for suggesting!