Old Mother hubbard: Inventory your Cubboard

In the past, I have haphazardly went to the grocery store with a list of must buys (bread, milk), but didn’t take the time to check my inventory. It took throwing out $15 worth of canned goods recently to wake me up to the value of inventory.

If you work and raise a family, it is difficult to find the time to inventory your stock every week. Taking the time to at least organize your cabinets and check the dates of everything will keep you from making unneeded purchases. Why go out and buy crackers, if you have say 3 partially open boxes in your cabinet? Once organized, it will be easy to swing open the cabinets/pantry and see that no, you do not need to buy mac n’ cheese, but you could use some bullion cubes.

Inventory of your supplies also opens a world of possiblities for making your dollars stretch. If money is low and you only have a few cans of this or that, use online recipe sites (such as allrecipes.com) to find unique ways to use what you have.

Expanding your food repetoir is not the only value of inventoring your cupboard. Such inventory may open your eyes to what foods you can make from scratch cheeper than you can buy the prebought stuff. Who really prefers instant mashed potatos to fresh mashed potatos?