Pare down your inventory

Make a game of using up what you own

We are regular Costco shoppers. My husband also has a tendency to buy specialty meats at the store next to his hair cut place every time he gets his hair cut. He and our 16-year-old went fishing in Alaska last summer and shipped a ton of halibut and salmon home.

So let’s just say our stock of frozen protein is high. As we tend to repeat easy, crowd-pleasing meals during the week, our halibut is not exactly flying off the shelves. This is compounded by the fact that the meat is all deeply frozen, meaning that thawing is a multi-day process. But it probably should all get eaten at some point — which means I’ve been working on a sensible plan to pare down the inventory, one that might be helpful if you’ve got a stockpile of something in your house too.

The first step is to get a reasonable sense of what you’ve got. I looked in the freezer and made a note of the options, from the chicken thighs to two racks of lamb, to a bag of scallops, to, yep, all that halibut.

Get in the routine

The next step is to figure out a good cadence. I thought about when we might reasonably try to eat from the inventory. I targeted Saturday/Sunday — only aiming for one of the two, since we generally are out one of those nights. Targeting a day (roughly) is important because then the next step is to figure out the logistics. In my case, “take the meat out of the freezer” would need to go on Thursday’s to-do list.

Part of the logistics is also making the paring-down easy enough that it’s doable. I decided that the goal was eating the meat, not trying anything too crazy. Most proteins taste pretty good with some olive oil and salt. In a pinch, chipotle aioli also works. Roast some veggies and potatoes as a side, and everyone is good.

And finally, you might give yourself some sort of reward — gamifying the paring, if you will. I don’t set a strict grocery budget, but if someone did, one obvious upside of paring down food inventory could be putting the saved money into something fun. I like to put things on my to-do list and cross them off, so “eat that halibut” gets a big, satisfying scribble. If you want a sticker chart as an adult, go for it. You and a friend could both pare down your inventory together and compare each weekend who did a better job.

You need a plan

We’re just a few weeks into this, so I won’t declare victory yet, but it’s a reminder that it’s generally satisfying to use things up. In life we can easily accumulate things. We can save money, energy, and space by using what we have. Yet if the tendency is to accumulate, then things won’t be pared down without an actual plan.

So think about what tends to build up at your house, and if a plan might help you pare down. Maybe it’s skin care products. I’ve accumulated a lot of freebies and samples over the years — and it’s kind of fun to use what you know is theoretically an expensive product liberally. Otherwise it’s just going to sit there, taking up space. Maybe it’s notebooks. My supply of little notebooks for capturing good ideas exceeds my supply of good ideas at this point — so I’ve decided it’s OK to use them for my mediocre ideas.

I’m not a huge fan of no-spend challenges, but the upside of such things is they do force people to look at what they have. With enough storage space, things can go bad before you ever use them. If they do, that’s a total waste. Better to have a few Saturday night halibut dinners, and maybe use that pricey anti-wrinkle cream as a regular hand moisturizer.

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