My cupboards are full, yet I have had to do a food shop. Why..................

[Stopshouting]

Surely I have enough cupboard space - me, dh, ds 1 & 2. Why does my kitchen always look a tip? I have done the FLY thing - still kitchen always has STUFF everywhere. I have had it. Please help. Anyone have a wand????????

dunno but if you find the solution please do share... i clear out and scour my cupboards every few weeks and yet a week later i open the door and something hits me in the face as it's full to the brim.... yet we still never seem to have food

why don't you do some meal planning? then you can plan to use the things you do have till they are all used up and all you have left is the random stock cubes/ herbs etc?
i have just started reading the flying thread, not sure if its for me but i do like lists and meal planners (plan for a couple of weeks and then just pick what you fancy each night) so maybe will fly my own special way. i have problems with piles of paper though so any help on stopping those would be appreciated.

I did used to meal plan - but got out of the habit I suppose - does anyone know the links to the menu planners that were around at one time?

Make a list of everything in your cupboards and then plan the next few week's meals around those ingredients.

If you try to meal plan around other MNers' menus you'll just end up going out and doing asnother shop to get those ingredients.

What you need to do is look at what you've got and make meals using those ingredients.

Treat it as a fun challenge to get through your - especially if you and DH can compete with each other to see who can make the tastiest meal without buying anything extra. DH does all the shopping in our house, so each time he goes away for a few days, we have the 'eating up challenge' - I can usually go for another week producing pretty good meals after DH has said 'there's absolutely nothing left in the house'. The BBC recipe finder is great for this.

I've spent the last couple of weeks batch cooking for the freezer as we'd built up lots of frozen meat. I needed to buy extra veg, but apart from that just used what was in the cupboard. So now my cupboards just have:

pasta and sauce packets
rice packets
pour over tomato sauces
curry chutneys
stock cubes/oils/vinegars
soup
spaghetti hoops/shapes/beans/mac cheese tins
custard

All the rest has been made into meals!

I also have another 'snack' cupboard which has hot drink spares, bakings stuff, crisps and kids snacks.

Cereals are stored seperately in plastic containers and replaced when they run v.low or run out. Pasta and rice are in similar containers. I keep one extra packet, and just replace this when I use it.