How to Shop and Stock Your Fridge More Efficiently

Do you want to go grocery shopping less often while continuing to eat fresh, healthy meals every day? You can if you have a system. I typically shop once every 2-3 weeks and use what I bought in a strategic manner. Smart grocery shopping leads to easily cooking without recipes.

How?

Before I go shopping, I take inventory of what I have remaining in my refrigerator, freezer and pantry so that I don’t needlessly buy more of something I won’t use right away.

Here’s an example of how my refrigerator might look before I go shopping. I have condiments in the door and a few onions and a few limes in the bottom drawer. A few random vegetables and fruits with long shelf life remain, such as squash, apples and part of a cabbage. The only fresh proteins left are some hard cheeses and eggs, so for me, that means it’s about time to shop. But I could still use what I have there for some time if I wasn’t able to go out because the freezer is still fairly full of proteins, vegetables and fruit. My pantry is also well stocked with rice, pasta, beans, oatmeal, nuts and a few canned goods.

What Do I Buy At the Market?

Fresh produce and proteins mostly. I load up my cart with one of each fresh vegetable offered…well, almost. I think about how much of each vegetable we can reasonably eat within a given period of time. Lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes will be consumed during the first week. Bell peppers, celery and collard greens can wait a bit longer. Carrots, beets and sweet potatoes can wait even longer. Take note of how fresh the produce was when you bought it and be sure to use it within a reasonable amount of time. You shouldn’t have to throw anything away.

Here’s what my refrigerator looked like after shopping.

How To Organize the Fridge

First I removed and set aside whatever I had remaining from before. Then I restock new items in a way that makes sense in order to help myself use things in the proper order. Produce that doesn’t have to be used immediately can go on the bottom shelf. Things I want to use sooner go in front and center. Fresh proteins go on the top shelf where it’s coldest in my refrigerator and arranged in a way that tells me what to use first. Fresh fish always gets priority.

What About the Freezer?

Fresh bread goes into the freezer along with anything else that I don’t think we will use in the immediate future. So in the first picture I had some grapes that we hadn’t consumed prior to purchasing new groceries. I plucked them off their stems and put into a plastic bag for the freezer. They can go into a morning smoothie along with some fresh veggies and raw nuts for breakfast.

What’s For Lunch?

What does lunch look like? Below is an example of lunch right after grocery shopping. I bought some cute microgreens that I knew needed to be consumed very quickly. So I combined them in a salad with some other new, very perishable produce and a couple of items that were remaining from before I went shopping. I had a part of a can of black beans in the refrigerator and some pieces of cooked chicken in the freezer that I didn’t really have room for after I went shopping. So I heated the beans and chicken in a skillet with some chopped onion, cumin, oregano, paprika, smoked paprika. Then I made a salad dressing with crushed garlic, salt, mandarin orange juice, salsa and olive oil. After tossing the vegetables in the dressing, I topped with the seasoned chicken and beans.

What’s For Dinner?

What would be on the dinner menu immediately after grocery shopping? If I had bought fresh seafood, that would have been the first thing to think about. In this case, Michael had requested hot dogs on hamburger buns…so, we did diverge from my usual, most practical approach. A package of unopened hot dogs can sit in the refrigerator for some time or be frozen, so I don’t consider them top priority to be eaten. However, because he requested hamburger buns, I decided we might as well eat them because those are big fluffy things that take up way too much valuable real estate in my freezer, which is where the uneaten buns were headed. So I decided hot dogs were a reasonable request. That being said, sliced whole grain bread, French bread, flatbread and tortillas get priority in my freezer. Smart grocery shopping also requires smart storage.

An opened bag of frozen French fries balanced out his plate. I had some leftover roasted cauliflower dressed in pickling spice. To each his own…to be fair, I had already snacked on some potato chips before dinner. Yes, I snack too…

What do you think of my approach? I find it liberating not to plan a weekly menu and follow recipes. Buying lots of fresh items while stocking the freezer and pantry with essentials means I can create something new every day depending on what I combine. Start with smart grocery shopping and get cooking without recipes confidently.

For more on vegetables and my strategy, please read Keep It Fresh next.