If it were left strictly up to me, I would keep a tight control on what goes in to the pantry. Right or wrong, I feel an obligation to ‘get rid of things’. It ends up being an alphabet soup if you will of things that you thought you would make or partials or whatever.

Here is the technique that I use. I pick an ingredient and then I build a meal around it. That’s it. You keep doing that until you eliminate oddball stuff or get the volume of items cleared out. Of course, you could always use the canned food drive as well.

I strongly recommend that you “buy what you eat”. Looking at my picture you can see that there are a couple cans of soup. I purchased those because my wife was sick and she wanted pho. It was already 5pm and I was 30 mins from home. I made the decision to buy chicken noodle soup instead of adding another hour of going to a restaurant and ordering take out. She told me that she hates chicken noodle soup. You would think after 30 years, that might be something I knew, but that was news to me. So, I bought something that we don’t eat.

You can also see that we have a can of Jack fruit. That particular item, my son bought from the Asian grocery store. We have a vegetarian, Mexican cookbook that uses jack fruit in place of meat. This particular ingredient I do plan on using, I have just been lazy about doing it.

The dry side of the pantry is more difficult to one and done. For this reason, I suggest that you either substitute whenever possible or buy the smallest quantity available. If you find that you are really gaga over the results, then invest in the real thing because going the other way around leaves you with a 7/8″ container of an ethnic spice or mix that you have to make copious quantities (or throw it out).

I have loads of hot sauces, rubs, seasoning mixes etc. I personally have an aversion to some of these things because I don’t trust the composition. My preference is to make my own blends from basic spices that is sized for what I am doing. I guess that it doesn’t hurt to have these things around, I just don’t like the clutter. We will be thankful in the zombie apocalypse.

Another trick I have used successfully is the bulk section. Bulk doesn’t necessarily mean large quantity, it means quantity of your choosing without packaging. So when you have 3 leftover lasagna noodles because the pack has 12, you can buy 6 noodles from the bulk section to get rid on the three you do have. It is also good for recipe sized purchases. And added advantage is that it is cheap.

I have a similar relationship with the refrigerator as the pantry. And the strategy is the same, pick an ingredient and build a meal around it. Things like jellies can be incorporated in sauces or compotes for example. Keep going and stop buying things that you only use once and pretty soon, things will be cleaned up.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a balance. I would never tell my family that they couldn’t purchase something. But, I don’t appreciate the burden of having leftover ingredients around. I guess if no one can stand it, you can always pitch it but I hate the waste too. I would much rather find a way to use it up than throw it away. Above all, if you focus on eliminating the problem, then chances are pretty good that you will succeed.