Can I ask about your fridge ?

[Originalusername01]

I feel like I am adulting wrong. Whenever there's a thread on here about what's in your fridge, the fridges always seem full. And when I pop down my mums (before lockdown) this always seems full. I meal plan and this arrives on a Thursday but come the next week and its normally empty excluding the basics. We always have milk , butter and eggs in. At the moment we also have an open jar of nandos sauce, ketchup,mayo and a bbq sauce open. Think there are a few frubes lingering at the back as well. Whats in your fridge or the essentials ? Do you meal plan or have much waste ?

It’s always fairly full. We do plan roughly what to eat for dinners, but breakfast and lunch are free for all so there is usually a random selection.

Top shelves always full of sauces, dressings, pickles etc but the rest starts out full at the beginning of the week and then gradually dwindles. We meal plan and only buy what we need for meals, use leftovers and freeze extra portions so we don’t waste much. I do have a vacuum pack of beetroot that’s been there since Christmas though!

We meal plan, and often cook more than is needed for dinners to have ready leftovers for lunches. So if it’s something with pasta or a sauce, we often have a portion or more left. Usually have eggs, cold meats and cheese too.

I don’t like it being too empty at the moment, in case we have to isolate.

We meal plan so towards shopping day it'll get pretty empty. Usually butter, milk, cheese, grapes or blueberries & bubbly, I always have a bottle to hand but know what this says about me, & I'm ok with that 🤩
Both freezers however (2nd one at back of garage) are absolutely rammed so between them & store cupboard top ups we'll not need much other than fresh bits for a few weeks.
We do a big Costco shop at the end of the mo th to stock up.

My fridge is usually pretty sparse. Sauces, butter, milk and cheese usually. There's usually some grapes or something loitering too. My freezer however is always full.

Ours is full on shopping day, but by the day before it’s only got butter, maybe eggs, some beers, and the usual sauce selections.
We are creatures of habit and buy the same food every week, and know it’ll all get eaten.

Similarly to PP, our freezers are always full

How big is your fridge? Ours is small so seems full of stuff even if it’s not!

In our fridge there’s always:

pickles, chutney, jam, mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, mustard, BBQ sauce, pesto, random stuff like curry pastes, palm sugar, fish sauce, cheeses x several, butter (spreadable & unsalted for baking), milk, soy milk, leftovers of previous meals, opened half-used things like passata or coconut milk or sweetcorn, fresh veg of various types, usually big tub Greek yoghurt ...

We meal plans a bit but I’m very much a “make what’s in the fridge & freezer into a meal” type so there’s usually always stuff that will make a meal in stock and the massive amount of condiments is part of that!

Always a pretty empty fridge here, apart from the booze! Never do well at planning more than a few days in advance.

Tonight there is cheese, mustard, mayo, pickle, milk, haggis, beef stew ready meal, 3 potatoes, vodka, beer, rum, gin, diet coke, tonic, baileys, crabbies.

We have a huge fridge/freezer and on grocery delivery day the fridge is usually half full and the freezer about 3/4 full - but a lot of it is things like condiments (eg 4x different mustards!) milk x lots (we get through about 35 pints a week) natural yogurt x loads, lots of different cheeses as my husband and I both love it, and bulky things like a big dish with leftover lasagne for tomorrow's lunch, also lots of drinks - cans of tonic, orange juice, etc. The. Veggies that last between shops like peppers, cabbage, parsnips, celery. It all adds up to fill the space even between shops!

NB I think you are a better planner!

Mine is usually full from Friday-Monday then consists of milk, cheese, Mayo, random bits of salad and half things wrapped in foil with a bit of chicken.

Been food shopping today and by next Friday the fridge will look pretty empty. There will be butter, cheese and yoghurt in there and perhaps a bit of milk.

Where's all your veg, alcohol, cheese etc, if your fridge is mostly empty, plus meat if you eat it.

I'm waiting for ours to break so I can get a bigger one. It's always stuffed, even though there's only two of us. Fuck knows how families manage. It's not even like we eat anywhere near the amount of veg and salad that the average Mumsnetter seems to do.

We meal plan & have Gousto 2 or 3 times a week, but always have extras in.

Top shelf is dairy so always have cream cheese, a block of cheese, butter & lard plus any cream, etc
Next one is sauces (Mayo, ketchup x2, mustard, brown sauce, perinaise, squirty cream) and savouries (sliced meats, Tupperware with cous cous, etc)
Next one down is fruit & yoghurts & DD's fruit pouches so that's always at least half full
Next is drinks (sparkling water, jug of filtered water, coconut milk, fruit juice)
Last shelf is raw meat - always chicken breasts and usually bacon & sausages
Then the veg drawer with 2 sections, 1 for salad veg and 1 for "normal" veg

The door has a shelf for fresh herbs/chillies, another for jarred sauces & a third for milk x2 (blue for DD, green for us) & a bottle of wine

I very rarely throw food out - meat gets frozen and veg gets made into soup or sauces for pasta

Yours sounds very well organised to me! Mine has three shelves, and the top one is completely filled with jars of jam, chutney, pickles etc. I hardly ever use any of them, but when I go through them periodically I don't like to throw out the ones that are still in date.

There are more permanent occupants in the middle shelf - mayo, tomato ketchup for my sister (bleuch), pickled onions (yum!), spreadable butter, 'real' butter, cottage cheese, other cheeses and sometimes veggies that won't fit into the veg drawers (cabbage, broccoli, celery, the occasional large lettuce). These seem to take up about half of the available space on that shelf, duh...

Then if I've actually been shopping I might add things like bacon, the occasional pie, very occasionally a cheesecake, chicken etc. If I've made a large batch of soup or similar I have to try to shove everything around to make space for the bowl.

I always feel better about my fridge when it's a little emptier. I like the sound of yours.

ALWAYS in my fridge - ketchup, mayo (several types ), cheese - at least cheddar, stilton, parmesan and at least one tub of Philadelphia, mustard - wholegrain and nasty yellow stuff for DS, capers, pesto, butter, cream, creme fraiche, ham, bacon, cooked chicken (although that is usually gone by the time we get a delivery), lemons and limes, spring onions (we seem to use VAST quantities of these!), a random cauliflower, some sort of green veg - mange tout, broccoli etc, peppers, pak choi. Um, other stuff I am sure!

Peppers. A fair few peppers. And chilies - both fresh and jalapenos in jars. Oh and sun dried tomatoes.

I don't really drink a lot of alcohol..maybe a bottle of wine once every few weeks. I use up all the veg..maybe a rogue cucumber somewhere. Find it interesting to see what other people have in their fridges..is this what lockdown has done to me

Oooh good question. We meal plan but we also feed 5 adult size people 3 meals per day so we have a lot.

cheese - 8 types including two types of mozzarella WTF?
ham
beef
turkey
salami
bacon
cheese spread
cream cheese
butter
milk - two types
sour cream
OJ
cranberry juice
apple cider
mango juice
fizzy water
some cans of Diet Coke, etc
yogurts of various types
lard
hummus
pesto
Alfredo sauce
olives
mustards
mayo
ketchup
pickles
various salad dressings
hoisin sauce
fish sauce
various fresh herbs in tubes
garlic in a jar
ginger in a tube
various curry pastes
green onions
broccoli
cucumber
radishes
tomatoes
peppers
lettuce x 3
leftover onion
butternut squash
lemons and limes
bok choi
edamame
celery
leeks
leftover mincemeat
parts of about 3 different leftover meals
maple syrup
some jams that we don't eat fast enough to keep in the cupboard
redcurrant jelly
wine
leftover raw ingredients from meals we've made - I actually just put some tinned tomatoes and coconut milk in the curry I'm making

That's just the fridge in the kitchen. The one downstairs has spare milk, eggs, bacon, beer, champers, more sodas, and probably a load more.

We don't throw away much food either.

Oh we also have soft fruit, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, horseradish, oyster sauce, chutney, some teriyaki sauce leftover, tomato puree.