Is your kitchen full of food all the time?

[Croissantsfordinner]

I was at a friend’s house last weekend and she opened a few shelves and fridge in front of me and noticed every single inch was stocked with lots of food - I mean lots! It made me realise that the only times when my fridge is full is when we get our bi-monthly grocery delivery and then we eat what’s in it and it gets emptied quickly. I do a weekly refill of fresh products but generally I don’t keep loads of stuff around, just enough to feed us for the next 3-4 days. So in my fridge, even when well stocked, you will only find 1 pack of meat (we don’t eat much of it anyway), 1 type of fish, some eggs, some cheese, plenty of veg and fruit and 3-4 condiments. And milk. That’s it. Cupboards are generally stocked with a few packs of pasta/rice, some canned tomatoes, coconut milk and a pack of porridge and one of cereal + some peanut butter, tea and coffee and 1 or 2 packs of snacks for DC. I don’t tend to store lots of snacks and other type of food unless I am having guests over.
I wonder if I am a bit unusual and most people are more like my friend?

I shop weekly and always have a full larder and the freezer is usually at least half full, but the fridge is only full for the first couple of days. By day 4-5 it's over half empty and the day before shopping there's only a couple of things left.

I grew up in a home more like what you described OP and felt very comfortable with it.

My DH overstocks our home with food, and I find it completely overwhelming to have so much food. When there's too much choice, I can't make sensible decisions about food. I've had to ask him to hide any sweets, chocolate, or crisps.

My fridge and pantry cupboards are generally always full but according to my kids, there's still nothing to eat.

🤷‍♂️

I have four cupboards in kitchen for food. Plus a double cupboard on landing (live in a maisonette) with tins, jars, extra cereal, packs of pasta etc. Have a fridge/freezer which both sections are quite full.

Yes, for the apocalypse . I don't mean to but I accidentally stockpile

You should go to my parents! Garage has two tall shelving units full of tea, cereal, pasta, jars of jam. Then two vegetable racks with tins. Plus an under unit fridge.

I don’t like over stocking with food as I constantly feel the pressure to eat certain things before they go out of date. We get a weekly fruit and veg delivery and just buy other things ad hoc when we want. I find over stocking with snacks and treats mean those get eaten too often as well.

There’s no right or wrong, sometimes people stock up or don’t because it’s cultural.

We meal plan and do a weekly shop. The fridge & fruit bowl are usually a bit mother hubbardy the day before the online shop comes but there is stuff for a meal in our freezer - it might not be the most nutritious offering, and usually we have enough pasta + an emergency sauce jar (usually made from scratch) to make a fast meal too. I've had comments that we're an ingredients house though.

I also have a meat stock in the freezer- I have a spare of every cut/type we like and it's there for shortages or emergencies or being broke. Every so often we purposely eat through this and replace. Snack wise there are usually some biscuits for a nibble and a small chocolate stash so I don't think we're particularly stark and foodless but certainly not the groaning cupboards some have. Only thing I don't keep in as standard that we probably really should is bread. I snack on it otherwise. DH finds it annoying!

We look a bit falsely plentiful atm though. We've got some sort of bug from a friends toddler and I don't think we've eaten a proper, decent meal (certainly nothing really fresh) since the weekend. Lots of fresh fruit & salady bits probably going to waste because we have no appetites and we're trying to avoid restarting diarrhoea with anything too exciting. Also not inclined to risk delicate stomachs on anything that may have been in the fridge a while whereas I normally try to be sensible with the food in front of me and the condition of it. I hate food waste & this REALLY bothers me.

Oh I don't have a fridge full of perishable food and rarely waste food. My stash is ambient and long date frozen.

My cupboards and freezer always have plenty of food. My fridge gets a bit empty just before my grocery delivery but usually still has eggs and cheese in it.

Always well stocked, plus an extra fridge/freezer in the garage and lots of shelves with food/cleaning/hygiene stuff/medicine/water bottles etc.

And no, we never throw any food. We buy when things are on special and are happy to share things with adult children/parents in need.

Well there isn’t that much or I wouldn’t have time to eat it all before it went bad (only have a small freezer compartment in the fridge) Maybe 3-4 days worth?

No, apart from things like rice which I buy in bulk as I don’t buy supermarket rice we only buy what we’re going to eat that week.

When the DC were little we'd always have plenty of everything as, if I was cooking something for dinner and found we didn't have a tin of coconut milk or tomatoes or whatever and was mid-way through a recipe, it was such a hassle to bundle them in the car, drive to the shop and so on. Now they're teens, I am in and out all evening anyway so can easily add in a stop at the shop. Also, our street got into food swapping during Covid which means you can always put a shout out on the WhatsApp group and can have the missing ingredient in your hands within seconds! With less stuff in the cupboards, it is actually much easier to check what you already have in rather than presume it is somewhere buried at the back. I also now refuse to have a massive boxes of Cheerios and things in the cupboard as a child might want a bowl of them once a month. Tough! It's weetabix, bran flakes or cornflakes only. The same goes for a whole range of jams & things. Peanut butter, honey or blackcurrant jam.

We could probably survive for 3-4 months on the amount of food we have here. Cupboards are always full, freezer is always full, it's just the fridge that goes empty, but even then I end up wasting things as they go off before we get around to eating them.

Blame it on growing up in poverty and having empty cupboards all the time.

Was there a need for the rudeness?

We eat mainly fresh stuff and there's only two of us, so no. The cupboards/fridge arent full. There are some tins of tuna and bottles of passata, herbs and spices, mustard and cans of coconut milk in the cupboard. Salad, veg, home made mayo, eggs, cheese and meat in the fridge

There's meat, fish, some batch cooked meals and some veg in the freezer.

That's about it.

Also, our street got into food swapping during Covid which means you can always put a shout out on the WhatsApp group and can have the missing ingredient in your hands within seconds!

I love that!

My cupboards and freezer are always full. I got a bit paranoid after Covid and it became a habit. Keep trying to empty the freezer so it can be defrosted but they end up with more leftovers to put in there.

I don’t do a big shop for fresh food, I shop every few days, so the fridge is seldom bursting. I try to make sure we never run out of milk, butter or cheese, so I buy a replacement whenever we are low.

For storecupboard stuff, I try to have one unopened pack of everything waiting. I try to buy stuff when it’s on offer, so sometimes there’ll be, say, 4 boxes of teabags waiting in the cupboard because I stocked up on a good offer.

The fridge is full at the moment because we just had a delivery; there's a shelf for things to be eaten in next few days, a shelf for this week, and then other stuff. DH or I rotate everything when we fiddle about looking for meal ideas and are good at using up. When the fridge runs down we do one interim veg/carb shop and then another big delivery.

The cupboards and freezer are always well stocked including easy long life bits like part baked bread, carton juice. We keep a fair amount of bakery, meat and veg options in the freezer for when those run down; if we have too much veg on a short life then it'll be chopped and frozen to go into pastas. Leftover meals usually go in the freezer to do a single lunch or dinner, they get cycled through quite quickly. During covid we comfortably made a LOT of healthy meals just from the cupboards; pasta, rice, wraps etc are all easy when you have beans, chicken, onions, tomatoes, aubergine, courgette, leek, cauliflower plus all the spices and stores of sauce like chipotle and mayo. On rotation I'll totally run down veg, or freezer meat, or tins, or non-food (laundry, soap etc) and then restock, so none of it gets too old. DH thinks we have too much, but is surprised on the rotations when we run out of rice, tapenade, or whatever else. There's still plenty of food, we just have something else.

We rarely throw out more than a few bits; the food waste bin gets egg shells, fat, kitchen roll etc. I think that's quite common with both our families, we're all big on using up whatever. Does make me wonder how they are measuring quantities of household waste! Schools, hotels and restaurants will be much bigger contributors.

Oh, food waste also has veg peelings / ends / stalks and apple cores. I'm sure it comes to something by weight, but that doesn't mean it's actual wasted food.

Our cupboards are always full because we have loads of different types of pulses and grains, pasta shapes, nut butters, oils, baking ingredients etc. I also usually buy things like coconut milk and chopped tomatoes as cases of 4 or 6 cans rather than individually so we always have them. I can always make a last minute dal or veggie chilli with ingredients from the cupboard.

The fridge isn’t always full as we shop weekly but we do seem to have a ridiculous amount of pastes/condiments in there at all times (eg 3 different types of chilli paste!) so the door is always full and the middle shelf half full.

The freezer is usually rammed mostly with batch cooked food but I also usually have in there bread, peas, chopped spinach, fish fingers. Often also meat/fish that was bought with a yellow sticker.

This thread is really resonating with me. I call DH my ‘hunter gatherer’. He has an obsession about always having ‘just in case’ food. We now have an under the counter fridge, a fridge freezer, a freezer in the garage, a pantry and two bookshelves of tins, cleaning stuff etc in the garage. And don’t even mention the water and drinks cans in there. He also panders to the two DGC, who live with us, ever changing tastes. Our weekly bills are extortionate!

I always have well stocked cupboards with non perishables. Just seems normal to me to build up a “stock” iyswim.

Same for freezer.

I try to keep fridge to what is needed, as it’s perishable and I don’t like waste. But it does seem to fill up with jars alongside the fresh food.