Keeping inventory

This is a picture that I took just after Thanksgiving, but a comment from my friend Liz made me remember I wanted to post about it! 

On the right is our little white board that Hubby & I use to write little messages to each other. We were both so excited to have Thanksgiving leftovers! I LOVE Thanksgiving leftovers, and so does Hubby. The kids love them, too, because they LOVE turkey, and pumpkin pie. But that's not the point of this post. 

Next to our white board you'll see the freezer inventory. We have a chest freezer in the basement, and I (of course) use it when I stock up on good deals. (In fact, I have a couple of hams in there that I bought for a steal during Holy Week.) 

The freezer inventory works like this: I make a list of what's in the freezer, with a slash mark next to the item, indicating how many of the item I have. (If I have three boxes of stick butter, it gets three slashes.) When I remove an item from the freezer, I make an "X" out of my slash. I lifted this idea from The Tightwad Gazette, when the author writes about keeping track of her garden produce. 

The inventory helps me plan meals, and it keeps me from being wasteful. If I see a good deal coming up on an item, I can check my list to see if it's time to replenish my supply of said item, or wait for the next sale. 

I'm not perfect at remembering to cross off items, and I do make a new inventory list every four to six months (my old one gets messy and inaccurate.) But it does help!