Do you ever notice that you end up with things that just tend to sit in your pantry? You keep meaning to use them, and then those items are forgotten. Eventually, items go past their expiration and you have to toss them. I find it really frustrating to throw out food that I have been meaning to use or either completely forgot about – after all, it is throwing out money. And I find it frustrating that my pantry is always bursting with food.
Here is something you can do every month or every few months to reduce your pantry clutter, and save the money that would be lost by tossing expired foods. You may want to pick a time that works, and even write it on your calendar – for example, the last week of every other month.
Go through your pantry.
~ Sort and organize items. This way you don’t end up with so many duplicates. The point of this is not necessarily to do a deep cleaning of your pantry — so if you want to do a quick once over, forget the organizing and just grab a few items you know have been sitting there for a long time that should really get used. Yes, this means those things you have been avoiding using!
~ Choose items that you want to use up/get rid of
~ Check expiration dates and pull your oldest items
~ Toss anything that is expired
~ Collect anything you might want to give away or donate
Come up with a plan.
Take the items that are closest to their expiration dates and create a meal plan.
You may want to make a goal, for example, to use up 1-2 items per week.
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Chances are, if it is in your pantry, you’ll need to supplement your recipes with fresh foods. For example, that jar of curry sauce you found at the farmer’s market last summer, or a jar of marinated artichokes – you might need to shop for meat, pasta, or veggies, and so on.
You can also do a freezer clean out week, especially if you have a deep freezer and foods tend to be forgotten!
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About the Author: Marysa
Busy blogger and mom of two girls! We love traveling and the great outdoors, and are always looking for our next adventure!
I so need to clean the pantry. It is looking rather scary at the moment. I might do that this weekend.
I just told my husband about this the other day. I know we may have some outdated products; we are well overdue to clean out our pantry,
We have trouble eating all we purchase. We always have spices that are past the expiration date because we just can’t use that much. I love your ideas.
This is such a wonderful reminder to clean out the pantry. Thanks for sharing these tips.
Oh, Im so excited to do this. I have been putting it off but thanks for the inspiration
I just found my weekend project. I’ll be creating a meal plan using the items that are closest to their expiration dates.
I think I need to clean up my pantry today. Thanks for sharing these tips with us.
This is a good plan to ensure the optimization of stuff in your pantry as well as reduce wastage. Would love to implement this on a periodic basis.
I am in the process of doing something just like this in my own home. I have been donating things that can be used by someone else but the freezer is my biggest issue, going to work on that soon!
I’m actually doing something like this right now. I went through some stuff and got rid of all the old and expired items. Right now I’m actually doing a thing where I don’t buy anything and eat what I have at home until most is gone. Of course I’ll buy the regular items like eggs, milk, etc.. It really helps to eat the food you have at home before going out to buy more groceries.
I am really excited to do this. these are really great tips. thank you for sharing this.
I will add this on my plans for weekends I really need to clean our pantry. Thanks for the tips!
One of my favorite things is to declutter and purge the excess stuff we have. Great tips for organizing a pantry.
I need to sort out my pantry so this post came out in time for me! I need to work out a plan to sort it soon
It was an informative post. I definitely needed it since I was in a great trouble with this.
This is something that I need to do for sure. My husband is going to remodel my pantry… it is small but we are going to brighten it up and put in some pull out shelves to make getting to things easier. It is so easy for things to be forgotten in there and that end up expiring so you have motivated me to go through mine and organize today 😉
Not throwing away as much food as really one of my main focuses lately so this post was very refreshing! I finally took the action to buy more pantry organizers so that I can actually see my items to remember to eat them, game changer!