Freezer & Pantry Inventory

The point is the date, not the list

Most people know roughly what is in the freezer. What nobody knows is how long it has been there, which is the only column that changes what you cook tonight.

Two columns doing quiet work

Where it is matters once you have more than one freezer, or a chest freezer where things sink. Date in and use by together tell you what to eat first without opening anything.

Keep it on the door

Cross a line out when you take something; add a line when you put something in. A sheet that lives on the appliance gets updated. One in a drawer does not.

What goes in each column

• Item — including the portion, because "bolognese" and "bolognese x4" are different things at six o clock.
• Where — which freezer, which drawer, which shelf.
• Quantity — cross it down rather than rubbing out, so you can see the rate you get through things.
• Date in — the column people skip and then regret.
• Use by — for frozen food this is a judgement, not a label; three to six months for most cooked dishes.

Printing it

Choose A4 or US Letter before you download and the table is laid out to fit that sheet — column widths are shares of the page, not fixed millimetres, so nothing is cut off at the right-hand edge. Alternate row shading can be turned off if you are photocopying in black and white, where a pale tint sometimes reproduces as a muddy grey. If you need more than one page, set the page count before downloading rather than printing the same PDF twice; the pages are then numbered, which matters the moment two of them get separated.