I find that fall is usually a great time to take inventory of what I have in the freezer and the pantry. Lots of produce from the garden ends up in the freezer and I want to know what I have so I don’t forget to use it throughout the winter. I also want to know what’s in there that needs to be used soon so we can start incorporating it in meals and snacks. To help us, I ended up creating a freezer inventory printable.
My husband and I have tried a few different inventory methods and for us, having something on paper works best. We tried a spreadsheet online but pulling it up on our phones/computers was just too cumbersome in the middle of cooking.
The key to creating something we’d use and stick with was separating everything into categories, tracking how many of each thing we had, and being able to change the number without rewriting the entire list.
Below is the method we use to track items in our freezer! This is a free freezer inventory printable I created so feel free to print your own copy and get organizing 🙂 Click here to download.
The dashed lines are for your main freezer categories. We break ours down into:
- Meals
- Sides
- Fruits
- Veggies
- Ingredients
- Desserts
For anyone who’s wondering, ingredients are things like vegetable broth, pre-proportioned tomato paste, nuts, pesto cubes, chocolate chips, etc.
Your categories will be whatever makes sense for your family!
Now, lets talk about how to use the circles, because that’s the cool part! For every item you have of that type, outline the circle. Then once you use the item, fill in the circle. If you only use half of it, fill in half the circle. Easy! If you buy more, just outline more circles. Here’s an example with peaches. We had five bags to start with and then we used two and a half of them. It’s easy to see that we have two and a half left.
I made this printable flexible so if you have a lot in one category, just use two sections side by side for the same category, or even more if you need! You can also print multiple pages if you’re blessed with more freezer space than I am.
We usually end up redoing this sheet about twice a year, but if you want to make it last even longer, here are some ideas:
- Super Easy: Use pencil and erase as necessary
- Easy: Put the paper in a page protector and use a dry erase marker
- Fancy: Laminate the sheet and use a dry erase marker
- Super Fancy: Put the sheet in a picture frame and use a dry erase marker to write on the glass (great option if you have a wall by the freezer to hang the frame!)
I’m going to be honest, sometimes we forget to update the list and the freezer gets out of control. That’s okay! Just start again and move forward. Being organized 80% of the time (or even 20% of the time) is better than never. We divide our freezer into sections that are the same as the ones we use for the inventory so it makes it easier to redo them if necessary. Practice makes perfect right?
