With These Tips, You’ll Never Have to Throw Anything Away from Your Pantry Again
For many people, the pantry is where snacks, canned vegetables, pasta and spice mixes sit next to one another gathering dust, only to end up past their best-before date. What a waste—but with these tips, you won’t have to throw anything away from your pantry again.
You know the feeling: you grab a can of beans from your pantry, only to discover it’s already two years past its best-before date… For everyone who, like me, struggles with an increasingly full pantry (because sometimes you suddenly think it’s a good idea to buy five cans of beans in tomato sauce..): 5 tips so you’ll never have to throw anything away again.
1. Marie Kondo that thing
Marie Kondo is probably the world’s best-known organizing queen—and we should take a leaf out of her book. In my pantry, everything is scattered around, above and on top of one another. It’s not exactly easy to see what you have stored. By tidying your pantry properly, you’ll have a much better overview. One of Marie’s tips is to group everything by product type. That makes it easier to find things again.
2. FiFo
We’ll stick with organizing your pantry for a moment. Anyone who has ever worked in a supermarket is probably familiar with the term FiFo. It stands for first in first out and is vital for your pantry. Make sure the products with the shortest shelf life are at the front, so you reach for them first. This way, you’ll at least eat your oldest products first.
3. FoodAI
It can happen to any of us: you look in the cupboard and suddenly spot all sorts of things that need to be used up today. You just have to know how to turn them into a tasty dish. Now there’s help in the form of an app: FoodAI. In the app, you can enter everything you have available, and it will create a delicious recipe with it. Super handy, right?!
4. Airtight
Make sure packages are sealed airtight, including after opening them (for example, in a preserving jar). If your flour is left open in the cupboard, you run the risk of baking some extra insects into your next creation too—flour moths are more common than you think. Of course, nobody wants that.
5. Keep it small
We’re lucky to live in the Netherlands and hopefully won’t soon find ourselves in a position where we have to live off our pantry for years. So make sure your supplies don’t get out of hand—keep them small. By not buying ridiculous quantities, you’ll never have to throw away a ridiculous amount either.
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