Taking inventory

[Eschia]

This forum (Menu Planning) seems pretty slow so I'm hoping I'll garner some responses to my dilemma.
The biggest hurdle I have to menu planning is the constant inventory taking that needs to occur regularly. Once I take inventory of my pantry, cupboards, fridge and freezer, the logical thing would be to keep it up to date. Keeping it current would mean adding things when I've gone shopping and deducting things as I use ingredients up. It just seems like a whole lotta maintenance. There has to be an easier way to do it.
I'm wondering if a paper version or a digital version would be best to manage it. I'm leaning towards digital just because it seems faster and I'm all about paperless.
Does anyone else suffer from this "inventory" dilemma? Am I over-thinking it trying to make it easier? I sure could use some feed-back on this topic.

 

[medtran49]

We've given up on inventory. We keep track for a couple of weeks and then.... what we've found that works for us is looking what's in the freezers and then finding recipes to use what we find each week. We're slowly but surely working through the 3 freezers.

 

[Andy M.]

Keeping track of all the ingredients needed to cook daily is a near impossible task. Meats, poultry and fish, herbs and spices, canned goods, breads, etc. Nt gonna happen.

If you have a general idea of what you have, that's a starting point. What really works is planning menus for all the meals you'll need to get from the nest shopping trip to the one after. When we do this, we plan meals the day of or the day before our weekly shopping then check for the ingredients and what we have to buy to make those meals for the coming week.

We have a stand alone freezer in addition to the fridge freezer combo in the kitchen. Also there are supplies in the kitchen and the pantry. I've tried a paper and a digital inventory list but you have to get EVERY HOUSEHOLD MEMBER to keep it up. We don't do that any more.

 

[larry_stewart]

Im usually pretty well stocked with the basic cooking ingredients ( flour, sugar, oils, herbs/ spices, canned goods that I'd use in recipes ( like beans, tomatoes)

Obviously, veggies, dairy or anything that needs to be fresh fall into the " ill get it when I need it".

I do a weeky inventory. I make a list of what Ill be cooking for the week, do a quick inventory, see what I got, and get what I need.

If something is on sale or a good price, and can be stored, I may stock up.

I always account for a day where I get home too late to cook a dinner, or am just too lazy. Usually those days will consist of a pasta or something my wife can throw together quickly, with little effort ( assuming I didn't prepare a few dishes earlier in the week). Therefore, Ill always have multiple varieties of pasta available, maybe som ravioli, tortellini or gnocchi in the freezer, along with either a frozen homemade sauce or a favorite jarred/ canned sauce.

Im one of those weirdos who knows and remembers everything that's in the fridge, freezer, or cupboard and which shelf its on and where its located on that shelf. Often my wife will call me at work to ask if we're out of something, and my reply will be ' open the freezer, look on the bottom shelf on the right, towards the back underneath the cranberries ...

So my weekly ' once over' is enough for me to keep things relatively organized and stock.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I don't keep enough food on hand to worry about a formal inventory system.

If the freezer compartment starts to get full I jot a quick inventory on the back of an envelope and try to plan my meals around those items until the freezer compartment is empty enough to be cleaned, then I start over.

In the pantry, I try to keep at least one backup of things that I use most often.

I can see maintaining an inventory if you preserve most of your own food or have to take a dog sled to the store but it isn't worth the effort for me.

Good luck!

 

[caseydog]

We've given up on inventory. We keep track for a couple of weeks and then....

Yeah, I have to admit that I gave up on keeping inventory in the kitchen years ago. I honestly tried, but always failed. So, I just live with the fact that I sometimes run out of something, but more often, buy something I already have.

I realize that this reply is absolutely useless to you, Eschia, but it's all I got.

CD

 

[Kayelle]

My Souschef (husband) is a whiz at our meat freezer inventory. It's a real pleasure to always know what's in there, thanks to him. The kitchen bottom freezer is my domain and I keep it well organized with seperations between vegatables, prepared foods, meats, nuts and cheeses. Nothing is ever out of place as I hate digging through frozen food. We keep a really well stocked huge pantry of at least two of everything we use. When just one item is left, it goes on the running grocery list.

It's all pretty simple and saves on frustration.

 

[Oldvine]

Almost the same stuff rotates through the pantry, freezer and fridge around here, so it's pretty easy to "inventory". If a special something needs to go into a recipe, I buy just what I need for that event. That being said, I could probably pull off several meals with the supplies on hand for several days, maybe weeks. It has never occurred to me that I should do an inventory. The biggest effort I use is that new stuff goes to the back of the shelf and old stuff is brought forward.

 

[pepperhead212]

When I cleaned out my freezer back in the winter , or rather, re-organized it(I threw very little out, actually), I made up a new inventory for it, a page for each of the 6 shelves, plus the door. Here is an example of one of the inventory pages:
One of 6 pages of freezer inventory by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Then, I re-inventoried many of the things that I keep in tubs in the basement. Almost all of these items I keep in Foodsaver bags, and things that I use slowest, like some of the spices, I'll put an oxygen adsorbent pad, which will help them last almost indefinitely, combined with vacuum packing them. Here are two of the pages, of 8, from that inventory.
Inventory by pepperhead212, on Flickr

More inventory by pepperhead212, on Flickr

The canned goods and other things on the shelves in the basement, in the cabinets in my kitchen, or on the shelves in my pantry I don't inventory, because I can see what's on those. And those foodsaver bags in my inventory is what I refill the containers with - all of the spices, grains, legumes, and other bulk ingredients. There is absolutely no way that I could remember ALL of that - even in my younger days!

And when I made up those new inventories, I made a New Year's resolution to not buy anything else for my freezer, or make anything I would put in the freezer (it was incredible how many leftovers I had in there!), or add to any of those other tubs of bulk foods, unless I was totally out of something. And I've emptied a LOT of my freezer out, for those summer veggies.

 

[blissful]

Eschia, given your location, how often can you shop for groceries or restock in any way?

 

[caseydog]

I envy those of you who manage an inventory of food. The best I can do is organize my pantry so I can find things. I have actually gotten pretty good at that.

Every few months, I take everything out of my freezer, just to see what I have. I always have too many sausages, of various types. I then make a mental note... NO MORE SAUSAGES. When I put things back, I put the things I forgot I had and want to eat top and center. Right now, I have no chicken in the freezer. I need to get some, but I also need to use up some of those %&#@! sausages.

CD

 

[Just Cooking]

We've given up on inventory. We keep track for a couple of weeks and then.... what we've found that works for us is looking what's in the freezers and then finding recipes to use what we find each week. We're slowly but surely working through the 3 freezers.

Exactly...

I have a small fridge top freezer but, its amazing how things can get lost in it..

Ross

 

[GotGarlic]

We've given up on inventory. We keep track for a couple of weeks and then.... what we've found that works for us is looking what's in the freezers and then finding recipes to use what we find each week. We're slowly but surely working through the 3 freezers.

This is what I do, too. I've tried several times to keep an inventory, but I just can't stay with it for long.

I look in the freezers for proteins and I look at the grocery store sale papers. Then I plan meals for the week and check the fridge and pantry to make sure I have all the other items I'll need, as well as staples like coffee, yogurt, etc. I don't always keep to the meal plan, but by checking the freezers every week, I have a pretty good idea of what's in them.

 

[larry_stewart]

About once a month we dig deep, and turn over the freezer, and try to eat what's been lurking at the bottom.

Weekly, before I go shopping, I do a pretty good look through in the fridge, to try and keep things from hiding / growing in the back, see what we leftovers are still salvageable .

They either wind up as part of a dinner, food for the chickens, compost or the trash.