- Now, you all know that I am no fan of clutter,
but one area that we can all struggle with is the pantry
and the fridge and the freezer.
Now, these areas can get a little dicey.
Now I have a new challenge for you.
Let's declutter all of that extra food.
Now, if this is your first time here, my name is Robyn.
I help overwhelmed people simplify their lives
through organization, productivity,
and creating an environment where they can thrive.
Now, grab your tea and let's go.
(upbeat music)
I think that post-Christmas,
there are often a lot of things left over.
There's a lot of food in various places.
And like many people, we actually have a fridge
and two freezers and a pantry.
So these things are full of food.
You may or may not have a lot of food,
but just give this a watch anyway,
because I've got some great tips for you.
There can even be a lot of things left over
from the rest of the year.
Maybe you things you bought in the fall
or the spring or whatever.
So it is now time to do a pantry/freezer challenge.
No shopping for a month.
Do you want to join me?
I bet you do.
Food clutter can be a major problem.
We buy food, forget about it, and then we buy more food
and we end up with a whack of clutter
and then we have to declutter a bunch
of outdated or spoiled food.
That's not good.
That is just not good.
This is my fridge and freezer.
I know it seems like a weird setup.
It's like a full fridge and a standup freezer.
This is just how the house came.
A lot of people say, wow, look at your fridge.
And I'm like, no, it's a fridge and a freezer.
The thing is we really, really need to get an inventory
of the things that we have before we can declutter.
So I want you to grab a piece of paper
or actually a pad of paper, and you need to make a list
of everywhere that you have food.
I am going to write down everything I have in both freezers.
I'm not going to write down like all the spices I have
in the pantry or all of the condiments.
But when I go through the fridge,
I'm going to look at the condiments
and be like, do I use this condiment?
Because one of the most important things is that we're going
to use up the extra food that we have.
To use a few extra food that you have,
you need to know and you need to plan.
And then we're going to get into a bit
of meal planning at the end.
But let's get to the freezer.
Yikes, I like to keep the fridge a whole lot more organized
than this, but over time and several Costco trips,
this has gotten kind of full.
Now, if we look at the door here,
I have got a lot of frozen fruit.
This is not a good spot to keep these things
because the door in particular with upright freezers,
they're open and closed, a lot of heat or a lot, well,
a lot of heat goes in and a lot of cold goes out.
But like, look at these cherries that I got from a friend
when I was making kombucha.
Lovely, they're not pitted.
So I'm going to do my best to find recipes
and ways to eat pretty much all of the food.
So I mean, maybe like a compote or some kind of tart
or something for this,
but I'm just going to get down to making my lists
and declutter some of the stuff in here.
I do have some biscotti that I made at Christmas,
which were super fun to make.
And they're okay.
They're not super sweet.
I don't think I would again,
but these will be good when I have people coming by,
I will be putting these out and being like,
have more, have more, have more tea, eat this biscotti.
My family love taquitos and we have like open bags,
three open bags, a Ziploc bag with some taquitos in there.
So this is why inventory is so important
because we really need to know what we are dealing with.
I have some garlic scape, a shoot.
A shoot?
Like a thing that comes up from a garlic.
It's actually like a flower stalk and it's delicious.
It's so good to make like eggs and things like that.
But the problem is that these are dried out and old.
So there are certain things that I'm not going to keep,
especially if it hasn't aged well.
So I feel good about that.
I have a few more like this is like some kind
of candy I made at Christmas.
So we will definitely be eating as much of that as possible.
And I will get into the recipes in just a second.
Now that things have settled down,
I think it's a great time
to really tackle getting my pantry, my fridge,
and my freezer under control.
I am starting a challenge for the month of February
and I will host it in my Facebook group.
And I will even have some pages that you can print off
to inventory your stuff, plan your meals,
and even with some food and recipe ideas.
So head over to learn.minimalisthome.ca/pantry to sign up.
And it is going to be so fun.
My past participants can tell you
that my challenges are always fun.
And I think that the best part is the Facebook group,
because we can share our challenges and wins.
We can also maybe share some recipes and I mean,
things might get kind of weird as things go further along,
but I will get to that in a second.
Okay, so this is my fridge.
I have a lot of condiments.
I love cooking and I love cooking all sorts of foods
like Asian foods and Latin foods and things like that.
We have a six pack of beer that we opened
and had like one of at Christmas
because we had people come visit
and I wanted to be prepared, but we aren't big drinkers.
I don't need to keep this in here.
So I'm just going to stick it out in the garage.
It's a little disorganized.
Like the fridge is a bit messy.
I have to admit, I'm not going to take a ton
of responsibility for this because I was away,
but there are some things that need to be gone through.
So I'm going to go through things.
I'm going to write down my inventory.
Okay, so it's not as cut and dry
as not buying food for a month.
So let's get over some kind of
like ground rules, some ideas.
Here is how I recommend doing this.
But as always, you do what works for you.
Now, I will not be buying any meat,
canned goods, or dry goods for as long as possible.
At first, the only thing I plan to buy
from the store will be dairy
and maybe a few perishable items that we need
for optimal health, such as blueberries,
because I like to have blueberries
because they help prevent dementia.
And they're just a really, really nutritious food
and they are good for everybody.
So I just bought a big box from the store
because they are something that I try to eat every day.
But overall, I am trying not to buy much,
not to buy really any frozen stuff.
And just, you know, the odd thing of milk,
because I have a child who is like obsessed with it
and maybe like coffee cream.
Now at first you will see, I have a lot
and I really don't need to buy much at all.
We have plenty of frozen vegetables right now.
We have some fresh stuff in the fridge
and some canned items as well,
but I will get into the rest in a bit.
But first we need to look at the inventory
and I will recommend that you do this anytime,
only spend like 30 minutes making it, making your list
and then just wear whatever you want,
pajamas, you know, you do the thing.
I was wearing workout clothes.
I hate shooting in this pantry.
The lighting is terrible,
but it's even a little bit messy too.
Normally what I do is I come through about once a week
and I just straighten things up.
I make sure that I have like everything
in the right sections.
And I usually do that right before I do my weekly shop
on Saturdays because I take my son to work.
And so I drive, that's when I get my groceries
because he works at a store.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to come through here
and I'm going to make my list,
my inventory of all of the things that I have in here.
And once I have all of these inventories,
it will be much easier for me to get an idea
of what I am dealing with.
One thing I maybe didn't mention is that I am not going
to write all of this stuff down in one day.
What I'm going to do is just spend half an hour at a time
because I don't believe in ever making anything
like a crazy chore.
And so I am guessing that it is going
to take more than half an hour to go through all
of these areas and write stuff down.
Like in here, for example,
I have a lot of like a baked goods
and I have flour and oats and almond flour,
things like that.
So what I'm going to do
because almond flour isn't going to last long,
like almond flour is, it's got an oil in it,
so it's not stable for long.
So I don't want it to go bad.
I don't want to waste it.
So what I'm going to do is
like find some good recipes for that.
And I want you guys letting me know in the comments
some of your favorite recipes to use with like pantry items,
not necessarily almond flour, but you can.
When you're doing like a big clean out,
what are some of your favorite recipes?
Like bubble and squeak or shakshuka?
I think that's what it's called.
Like, there are a lot of things.
Like stir fry is always a great one
for like vegetables and things, but let's all share.
And also you can share the weirdest thing
that you have found.
Okay, we are in the garage and this is my deep freeze
and it has all sorts of things in it.
And I can't believe
(Robin sighs)
how much food we have.
So I'm really glad that we are doing this challenge.
So in here I have got two whole chickens,
there is a turkey, two packs of ribs, which is great.
Wait 'til you get to the meal planning section,
you're going to be like, oh boy, okay.
So. (Robin grunts)
There's this side of salmon in here.
This is great.
We're going to be eating like kings for a week or two.
And then things might get a little bit iffy.
So the whole point of this challenge is like,
you can save money with the decluttering.
But the other thing is,
it is also about like recognizing
where maybe we've overbought and then just being better
at meal planning.
Like I try to be really good at meal planning.
I check to see that I have ingredients,
but I think that sometimes, you know,
it's probably those days where we're like really tired
where we say like, you know what,
let's make this a takeout night
or let's just have grilled cheese.
And then some of those meals that we've bought for
kind of tend to go to the wayside.
And that is how we end up with like a side of salmon.
Like I do tend to like to buy like an extra turkey
when they're on sale, because they're just so good to have.
And they were like so much, so many great leftovers
and things like that.
I just don't like to have like a deep freeze absolutely full
of food that has just been sitting there so long
that it's starting to get freezer burnt.
I just think that's terrible.
Now that I have shown you this section,
let's get to the meal planning.
So when I was making my list,
I decided I didn't actually want to write them all down.
It was actually easier just to dictate into my phone
because there was a lot of stuff in there
and then I can put it on my,
email it to my iPad and then just make lists that way.
It was so, so much easier.
And now it's time for meal planning.
So I love, love, love meal planning.
And I usually don't actually even end up with extra stuff,
but I think it just sort of happens over time
that we might end up tired one night
and we're like, ah, you know what?
Let's just have a grilled cheese
or maybe we're just going to do takeout
or something like that.
So that is sort of how I think sometimes food
gets left over.
I knew that is how it happens with us.
And that's how we ended up slowly over like a year
getting more and more stuff stuck in the fridge.
So I have some cookbooks here and these are really more
for inspiration because I don't want to be running out
to grab ingredients to complete every meal
that I find from the cookbook.
Like, so my goal really is to use up what we have.
Now I want the meals to be delicious.
Like I love Half Baked Harvest, such, such good recipes.
And usually like they're really healthy.
Of course I open to the cinnamon rolls page,
but, and you know what,
I think I have all the ingredients for this.
(Robin laughs)
Cajun fries and you can use like potatoes
or sweet potatoes or whatever.
Like I can use that stuff up.
The Half Baked Harvest.
I grabbed my Pioneer Woman one, I just got this one,
this one's a little hit and miss,
but you do need some sort of like prepared ingredients.
So we'll see.
But really like, it's all about just using what you have
on hand and sort of substituting what you can.
Sometimes, if you don't kind of know what is a good idea
of what to substitute with, you can Google it.
And if you have those things, then that's good.
Like yesterday I made some muffins from some old bananas
because I was like I need to use up these bananas.
They're way, way, way too soft to even put in the freezer
because I do freeze some for my protein shakes.
But I thought, you know what?
I'm just going to make some bananas.
Why the heck not?
So I did that and they were yummy.
And this is another one, it's called Yum and Yummer.
It's really good.
She does a lot of plant-based things, but not exclusively.
And I really like her stuff and I will link all of these
in my shop if you want, like just the Amazon shop.
But we have some salmon that needs to be used up.
And you know, we have like a bit of cream cheese
left in the fridge, which is really awesome.
So like maybe I'll like try to make bagels.
That might be a fun thing.
Like it doesn't have to be a chore
being like we're going to use up all of this food
and it's not going to be good.
I just took out the turkey.
This is going to take days to thaw,
but we're going to have turkey in the middle of the week
in January because why the heck not.
Now I am so glad that I have a lot of flour
because I may need to bake a lot of things.
Like, we can, another thing you do
is like lots of pizzas, right?
You don't necessarily need to have pizza sauce.
If you do have canned tomatoes, that's great.
If not, you can just use like olive oil.
That can be so good.
Now in the beginning, it is always way easier.
But I don't want to compromise eating
like healthy and decent meals.
So as the weeks go on, we may need to supplement things,
maybe buying like a couple of vegetables or whatever.
But at first I think that we will be able
to make pretty much all of our meals come
from the stuff from the freezer and from the pantry.
And then maybe in a few weeks,
I might need to supplement with like the odd vegetable
or something from the grocery store.
But I plan on using at least 75% of the meal ingredients
from my stockpile.
I might buy the odd like aromatic ingredient,
like lemons because they just make things taste better.
Like that is okay.
And so once you make your list,
I want you to decide some meals that you can make.
So, like I said, stir fries are good, lots of pasta meals.
If you have pasta, you can do all sorts of fun, fun things.
If you sign up at minimalisthome.ca/pantry,
then I will email you a couple of recipe meal ideas
that you can do as well.
But overall, I think this is going to be really, really fun.
And I hope that you join me.
This is a video I did about cleaning up the kitchen
and I think you will like that.
And I will see you next time.
Thank you so much for watching, friend, bye.
(upbeat music)