Food Management - Inventory

I have always managed to keep quite an inventory of food in our house.  I pantry that was full beyond capacity and spilled over into other areas of our house and two bulging freezers.  It may have been a bit of overkill and as a result I've cut it back considerably.  Instead of more food than one family could easily consume in a year I have scaled it back to about a six month supply.

Our freezer is one of the smaller ones which is easier for us to manage

Now instead of trying to amass as much food as possible I'm more interested in maintaining my pantry and the freezer I keep in our garage.  This year I'm focusing on replacing items we use and rotating items regularly so nothing gets lost in the back and expires or gets freezer burnt.

The pantry list is a great tool.  I keep a copy in my day planner.

I operate off of a pantry list.  As long as I have all of the items on my list in the house I can pretty much make anything.  Recently I updated my list and created a Keto pantry list.  With my oldest not interested in Keto, my youngest doing it about 75% of the time and me going all the way with it I have found it very helpful to have both lists to work with.  If anyone is interested in my pantry list or the Keto version let me know and I will happily share it with you.  Drop me an email and I'll get it to you.

Planning out weekly meals & shopping lists

Keeping a six month supply of food on hand allows me to easily manage our food inventory without exhausting too much time.  Rotating items is crucial so everything stays fresh and doesn't go to waste.  It also keeps things fresh in your mind as to what you have for meal planning.  Managing a six month pantry is also quite affordable and I find it easier to stay on budget.

All of these items were on sale, markdown & I had coupons

Every week I check the grocery ads and digital coupons against my pantry list and draw up my grocery list.  I try to purchase everything I can on sale as it pops up in the ads so I get the most mileage out of my grocery dollars.  Managing a well stocked pantry and freezer allows me to feed my family very well without spending a lot of money to do it.