Byline Food Storage Inventory Made Easy

Electronically signing food inventory

so one of the best gifts we've ever received was our deep freezer it's true I'm in love with our freezer we've actually received two over the past couple years and they might be becoming my best friends having a stocked freezer and a stocked pantry is a life saver as a mom it can help you save so much money on groceries each month in today's video I'm going to share with you how you can inventory your freezer in your pantry easily so that you can keep up with it and know exactly how much food you have on hand hi everyone welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Meredith Rines I'm a certified financial planner and a budget strategist I'm also a mom a wife and a business owner I love helping families learn how to budget their money effectively so they can start paying down their debt and living a life they've always dreamed of on this channel I share weekly videos with budgeting tips money management family hacks and all around ideas for being a working busy mama so I encourage you to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a new video and I want to help you plan prepare and prosper with these tips today I want to share with you how you can inventory your freezer why you should inventory it and maybe even your pantry as well I'm also gonna give you a free download over on the blog post so that you can easily keep up with everything that you have on hand step 1 pull everything out of your freezers if you have more than one freezer you can work one freezer at a time or you can just do them all together I did mine together because I really wanted to see what I have on hand now we have technically three freezers we've got our fridge and freezer inside the house and then two deep freezers outside so I wanted to pull everything out because the things that we use the most of I wanted to be inside and the things that we aren't using that often I one of those to be out in the garage and the deep freezers now I would recommend only doing your freezers at this moment and not start pulling things out of your pantry or your kitchen cabinets let's save those for later because I don't want you to get bogged down and then things start falling or defrosting so if you work with just your freezers at one time then you can quickly work through them without worrying about things defrosting go ahead and grab a trash can and keep that close to you as well that way when you're going through things if something just looks a little off to you or maybe you're like I will never eat this what was I thinking trying to save this this go ahead and toss it don't even set it out on the counter just toss it step two is I want you to actually physically clean out your freezer and it might be harder with your deep freezers to get down in there but grab a shopback grab a vacuum clean out what you can't get all those crumbs that seem to magically appear out of those boxes in those bags so clean those things out I would also at this point if you have an icemaker dump the ice clean out the bin and start fresh step 3 is I want you to write out what you have on hand for us we eat a lot of chicken so ice in to buy chicken when it's on sale and I've got quite a bit of it in our freezer so go ahead and you can either just grab a piece of paper or you can grab the inventory checklist that I have listed on the blog and start writing out everything that you have in hand and if you are someone who's a little OCD like I am I wrote everything out on a piece of paper and then transferred to my inventory checklist so that way I can have it categorized by meats and poultry and then you know prepare dinners and then frozen veggies they could be a little bit more organized that way but do it however you want just get it written down know what you have and how many you have the fourth step is to put it all back so I like I said earlier I like to be a little bit more organized as I put things back into my freezers so if it is more of a vegetable or a side dish that we could eat on more often I'm gonna put it inside the house if I know for the next couple weeks what we're Mayo what our meal plan is then I'm gonna put those items inside the house but the items that maybe we're not eating that often or that I bought in bulk because well it was a good deal well I'm gonna put those out in the deep freeze so I don't have to worry about taking a valuable space in my inside freezer so go ahead and put things back make it organized so that way it's easier for you to find everything now the next step is I want you to do this whole process all over for your pantry pull everything out of your kitchen cabinets or your pantry closet and go through throw away things that have already turned or that look a little funky that you will never eat especially after a busy holiday season you probably have inherited some food that your family will just not eat toss it get rid of it at your kitchen cabinets clean out your pantry shelves and then make a list of what you already have on hand print out a new inventory checklist so that you can have one for your freezer and one for your pantry or multiple pages if you need it the sixth step is I want you to keep this checklist handy for us that means putting it on our fridge so we know where it is and I could easily look at it and keep it updated when we cook or buy things so make sure that you're keeping that checklist handy don't just fill it out and then stick it in a kitchen cabinet or stick it in a binder for the recipes or something like that keep it where you will actually use it and see it now this works great so if you look at your checklist and you are a family who loves let's say beef you like tons of hamburger you make spaghetti you make lasagna you make hamburgers you make meatloaf and you go through a lot of ground beef as a family and you notice that maybe you only have two or three pounds left and you see a good sale at the grocery store this week then you can budget a little bit extra of your grocery money to stockpile on what you currently use a lot of so for us that is chicken so I tend to stockpile chicken when I find it a good deal I will buy an extra pound or two and that works really well so make sure that not only are you keeping up with what you're using but you're keeping up with what you're buying as well on this inventory checklist and I want to know what's one thing you're afraid of finding when you're cleaning out your freezer for me I found this cinnamon roll braid that I bought from our cousins who was in high school four years ago we have never used it it's still good I think but I tossed it because it's not something we're gonna eat and we never we haven't eat it eaten it before so I just tossed it but I found I don't know what it is so I want to know what's one thing you found in your freezer that you're afraid to find in your freezer when you start cleaning it out but now you know how to inventory your freezer effectively so that you can actually meal plan correctly when I talk about meal planning I'll link a video for you but when I talk about meal plan I always go through what I already have on hand first that way I can keep my grocery budget down that way I'm able to stockpile because I have the extra money because we're using what we have on hand so when you are going through your mail planning make sure you're using what you have on hand in this inventory checklist we'll make it a thousand times easier because you don't actually have to physically dig in your freezers you can just look at a piece of paper and know exactly what you have but go ahead and grab that free download from our website I will link the blog post where it's in there but grab that you can use that to help you just get a good hands-on idea of what you already have