For those who have stocked up on groceries...

I reorganized my pantry about three weeks ago as it was a mess. I went through and with a sharpie, wrote the expiration month and year on every item so that it's easily visible. Also took inventory of things I still needed and rotated the older items to the front. Things that were expired were pulled and placed on the floor. If they were still okay to use, we did/are using. Freezer was organized a few months ago and I had already tossed all the items that had frostbite or that were several years old.

This exactly!

Plus we have a small freezer in our garage.

I went thru my pantry and reorganized so like things are together. DH doesn't cook at all, but he messes up my system when he puts groceries away.

All my extra canned goods, etc are in the basement on what we call the Costco shelves.

I bought bell peppers, mushrooms, carrots, and celery to freeze for when I run out of fresh produce.

We only have on refrigerator freezer and a small pantry, so we bought our 2 week supply and stuffed it in the refreigrator and freezer. We can't find anything! We dont' want to take it out and organize because we can't leave the door open long. It's a mess! Our non refrigerated food is sitting in clothes baskets in the dining room. Also an unorganized mess! I had to hid the snacks (I will never remember where, I had to get creative) because my kids would eat them in a few days.

I haven't organized anything and my fridge freezer resembles a game of Tetris. It's on my list of things to do.

This is where I am happy to have OCD (clinically dx'ed)


I went through the earthquake kit again and wrote out everything we have and the expiration dates as those are arriving soon since the food was purchased last year.


With the food I stocked up on, I wrote down what it is, how many and if anything expires this year. 


I also wrote down all the meats I have and how many with boxes to check off as I use. That is all frozen so I don't worry about the expiration as I bought what we go through in 3 weeks time. I could make it stretch 4.


I have also prepped and saved fresh vegetables for roasting and soups. I have done potatoes, carrots, and green beans. They get par boiled and then chilled in the freezer than bagged up.

Anyways we brought in one of the black/yellow garage organizers DH got from Home Depot awhile ago and have our extra food in there. I keep the pantry cabinet well stocked with at least 2 of everything I have and they are stored neatly as always in the cabinet. The rest is in the organizer box by the kitchen where we would normally set our shoes.

As I use something, I check off one of the boxes.

My indoor pantry area is fairly well organized. In late Feb/early March I did my overflow pantry (keep in the garage in bins since I order in bulk). Then early March I reorganized my freezers putting like with like and getting it in shape.

The timing of this was actually pretty fortunate for us. We just moved into a new house in January and I did a major freezer and pantry purge before moving. I’m realizing I didn’t allocate quite enough space in the new pantries for certain categories so I’ll need to tweak my system a little, but that will be easier once we eat down some of the stocked up stuff.

We didn’t go crazy because we already have a pretty decently stocked pantry and freezer. We don’t eat a ton of fresh vegetables, we mostly buy frozen and we had enough of that for a while. Both freezers are totally full now though since DH bought a couple more bags of stuff last week that had to be squeezed in the chest freezer. The kitchen fridge looks pretty much like normal but the inside of the garage fridge looks like a wall of cans of sparkling water, bottles of the Arizona tea and Arnold Palmers that DH likes. I did restock the Spaghettios that my kid likes, but the soup aisle at Target was totally wiped out so I couldn’t get more of the soup she wanted. We have a shelf in our mudroom where we can keep overstock of the canned stuff we buy at Costco, like diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, chicken broth, sliced mushrooms, etc.

But the funny thing was with DH home more he got a bug up his butt to reorganize the cabinet with all the cereal and crackers, cookies and candy and junk. He eats almost none of this stuff!   After he was done, I looked at it and noticed he put all of the stuff we actually eat way in the back in the most inconvenient places. Yeah, NO, not going to work. I had to shuffle a bunch of stuff around so it would make some actual sense for how we live.

Now if I could get him to pay some attention to the dumpster fire that is our mudroom (and which is full of the junk HE actually needs to address), we’d be doing good, LOL.

I know this is novel length, so I highlighted main areas so you can skip to only what interests you 

My pantry is always pretty well organized, partly because I am anal retentive and also because we typically don’t eat a lot of foods that are shelf stable (we are diabetic and overweight). Before this we had less than half a dozen food items that fit that category so when it came time to stock up a bit we had plenty of space for new stuff. I only have one shelf dedicated to food, and it holds our nuts basket, our fresh produce basket* and the shelf stable foods like canned goods, mostly we just kept tuna and items for mom’s egg enchiladas! We have always had part of a highish shelf dedicated to extras like condiments, oils & vinegar, spices, ziplocks, etc., with the smaller items in a basket that can easily be brought down and gone through. Now our extras just takes up a little more space on the shelf.

We are trying very hard stay healthy and to still eat mostly fresh foods so we only purchased the boxed and canned items for just in case we couldn’t get food delivered and we needed them. I had an empty shelf way at the top so we put those items up there since we won’t be accessing them unless needed. If/when they’re needed we’ll move them down to the easy to access shelf. I am finding I need another fresh produce basket so I can keep the older and newer produce separated. Normally we just put the older stuff in the front of the basket but it’s just too full to be able to successfully do that right now. I love using baskets because it is super easy to slide them forward to see and access any items in the back. I also use small ones on my baking shelf, it sits just above eye level for me so I can easily reach up and grab whichever labeled basket I need and bring it down.

I have the sick foods & products (drinks with electrolytes, soups, applesauce, jello, pudding and disposable utensils/plates/bowls/glasses***) in a high, out of the way kitchen cabinet that was sitting empty. Again, we will bring them down if/when needed. They’re right next to the bowl of Ferrer Rocher where I can’t reach them! *** mom ’s brother has the virus and he was told to use disposable items to lower risk of making family sick.

The refrigerator is where we are having the biggest challenge, especially on the day we get geoceries for the next two + weeks. For items like milk and yogurt the new goes directly behind the old in their dedicated spaces. Our tallest shelf holds our drinks, cooking wines, coffee creamer and food DH needs to remember to take into work the next day. And it’s where I gather the items we need for dinner the next night; I started just going through the night before to make sure we had everything we needed in case I needed to change up the menu, and decided it was silly not to just gather everything together at the same time and not duplicate my efforts! We have a small breakfast shelf for eggs and yogurt. Now we put the eggs in a clear plastic basket because it is easier to pull out than 4 separate cartons. And whereas before we just kept them in their original containers, now we can throw them and their germs away.

Produce is the main reason we are short on space. We keep the new, duplicated produce on the huge bottom shelf and as we run out of something in our ‘active’ areas, we replace it with the newer version from the shelf. Loose, eat now produce goes in the drawers in green bags; one drawer for fruits, one for veggies, the tiny one for fresh herbs. I keep the fruit purchased for specific recipes in its own labeled green bag so that DH knows not to snack on it. We also have a shelf where we keep ‘current’ produce that lives in boxes/containers. We recently purchased this Rubbermaid container and tried it out with our blueberries, after 2.5 weeks they were almost as firm as the day we put them in there, and it barely takes more room than the box they originally came in. So I have another one coming for asparagus and broccolini, hoping to keep them fresher longer.

In the freezer we have a bin we use for protein and have always put the new meat behind the corresponding older item so we have kept that up. The products are already labeled, but we also write the date in sharpie so it’s easy to see from a distance without taking it out (we have a bottom freezer). The bin helps hold everything upright and makes it easy to see what we have without even bending over. If we buy a large pack of something, we break it down and freeze (flat so it is slim and can stand in the bin) in single meal quantities. Except chicken breast, we do two of those because it takes up less space. These days it doesn’t all fit so we keep the seafood in the drawer, but we still need another bin to sit beside this one to hold all the meat. Now we’ve added some frozen vegetables and fruit to the space. Truthfully those are just stacked in the separated compartment by type. It used to sit empty so that’s not an adjustment. Try to write dates on them but I think we’ve missed a few. We’re not eating them so that’s good enough for now. Will have to see how you guys are handling it when we break into them.

* I prefer the clear baskets I linked in the freezer paragraph, but for the pantry we bought these white Sterlite baskets, they’re cheaper and were sitting in front of me while we were at Home Depot and I wanted a solution now lol. But if you’re looking into organizing for the long haul I do recommend the iDesign clear baskets. The Container Store has just about every size imaginable. I’ve been using them for years in the freezer, my medicine cabinet, my linen closet and my craft room. They are super sturdy, come in tons of sizes and designs, and I love being able to see everything at a glance. Also, if you start using them around the house they become interchangeable so when you no longer need it for one thing it is easy to repurpose and it will still coordinate with its new area. Be careful when you are buying them for the purpose of sitting on a wire shelf. It’s hard to see in pics but some designs have feet on them and those get caught on wire shelves. MDesign makes practically identical products (which are easily found on Amazon) but I haven’t been able to find feetless baskets in the sizes I need from them. I try to buy all feetless so that they can be used anywhere in the house in the future. Both brands are also sold at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

eta: Something I’ve seen that I like and want to incorporate is actually from a couple of different tips from the scrapbooking world ages ago. One person had a bin/basket for the items they wanted to use soon. I think that was Jennifer McGuire, for new products she received and wanted to highlight in a video. And Shimelle had a small beautiful bowl of mixed embellishments leftover from packages that she always looked through first to see if there was anything she could make use of. So I want to have a smallish basket where we put things that need to be used fairly soon before they go bad. Before, we didn’t buy nearly as much fresh food at once so when it was time to meal plan and shop it was super easy to see what we had leftover from the week because our shelves and drawers were literally almost empty, save the condiments on the door.

I saw it explained once in terms that helped my husband get it, and remember. They referred to our spaces as real estate. Frequently used items needed to go into the prime real estate neighborhoods because they are close to where they’ll be used and easy to access. Eye level shelves are prime real estate so put fresh items there. The top and bottom shelf are way outside the city limits. Canned sardines that you are only going to eat when you have to get stored there.

Mushrooms - sliced and lightly sauted in tiny amount of olive oil. I put in Ziploc bag and spread out flat. I added to a homemade pizza last night and it was great. 

Carrots & asparagus - I cleaned and roasted whole, then froze in Ziploc bags. 

Celery - I cleaned, cut in thirds, then blanched 3 minutes, then 3 minutes in ice bath. It was a little soft, but for cooking should be just fine.

Bell peppers - You can just clean, slice and freeze.

I bought apples, because they keep fresh longer. I know I'll run out of fresh produce, so that is why I froze veggies that I cook with.

I am much more mindful now of not wasting a thing. I bet all of us are.