SS&GF: Simply Sugar and Gluten Free

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Welcome to Meal Planning Made Simple! If this is the first time you’re visiting this series, you might want to check out:

• Week 1: Meal Planning Made Simple
• Week 2: How to Meal Plan
• Week 3: A Well-Stocked Kitchen
• Week 4: Streamline Your Grocery Shopping

It’s the final week of this series and you’ve been making some big changes in how you run your kitchen. You’ve got meals planned for the week, you’ve started to stock your kitchen with essential food items, and you’re becoming a pro at cutting down the time you spend at the grocery store to a minimum.

Now, let’s tackle your freezer.

I used to put food into my freezer with the best intentions of using it for a future dish. Note that I said ‘best intentions.’ Without fail, I’d forget what was in my freezer and when it got too full, I’d clean it out. I always ended up throwing out food that was at one point really good.

The mark of a great chef and a savvy homemaker is not wasting food. This has never come naturally to me. I’ve had to discipline myself (and still do) to make the most of the food we have on hand.

Why inventory your freezer?

• It makes meal planning so much easier. You can quickly glance at your freezer list and know exactly what meals you can thaw, heat, and serve. (Remember when we talked about cooking once and eating twice?)
• It saves money. When you know what’s in your freezer you can use it before it’s overcome with freezer burn.
• It saves time. No more digging through a bunch of frozen food to figure out what might be hiding in the freezer abyss. And, since you know what’s in your freezer, you can easily restock when your supply of par stock items gets low.

How I Use My Freezer Inventory Sheet

1. Slide the sheet into a plastic page protector sleeve or have it laminated. For my garage freezer, I attach it right to the door. In my kitchen, I keep it in my pantry.
2. Either write on the plastic sheet or on the laminated sheet with a dry erase marker or just slide the sheet in and out of the page protector when you need to change something on your inventory list.

You can download the free printable freezer inventory sheet here.

Free Printable in this post:

• Freezer Inventory Sheet

How do you manage your freezer? What changes have you made in how you run your kitchen since the start of this series?

Much love,
Amy