How do you track your consumer products’ exp date?
- Thread starter josttyson
- Start date
I'm not positive what you mean, but the closest relevant answer for me:
During the pandemic, we've been buying extras of long-keeping food--canned goods, pasta, rice, etc. This is stored on shelves in or garage. Every major container--a can stacker, a bin, whatever--has a giant-size Post-It on it with a list of the types of items in the container. On the Post-It we put the soonest expiration date, month and year.
That is, if a bin has a dozen boxes of spaghetti with expiration dates of 1/2023, 8/2022, and 4/2021, the Post-It on that bin will have a line:
Spaghetti 4/21
Of course, this assumes that when I grab a box of spaghetti, I'll make sure that I grab some 4/21 spaghetti, check the remaining spaghetti, and, if necessary, update that line to:
Spaghetti 8/22
Is that going to happen? Not sure. Edited to add: We did the whole mark-expiration-date thing starting about a month ago, so we haven't had a lot of data points. We do write BIG expiration dates on the packages with a Sharpie, so we can avoid the "Where is the expiration date on this thing?" delay.
If I want to relate this to GTD, I could have some repeating actions under my Keep Us Fed project:
Action: Find garage food expiring within a month and move it to house pantry.
Context: Garage
Repeat: Every two weeks
Action: Inventory garage food, update expiration notes, add missing Sharpie expiration dates.
Context: Garage
Repeat: Every two months
Edited to add: All of this is due to stocking extra food to minimize grocery trips. Pre-pandemic, I didn't need any system beyond occasionally (every year or so) checking canned good dates to catch them in time to donate.
During the pandemic, we've been buying extras of long-keeping food--canned goods, pasta, rice, etc. This is stored on shelves in or garage. Every major container--a can stacker, a bin, whatever--has a giant-size Post-It on it with a list of the types of items in the container. On the Post-It we put the soonest expiration date, month and year.
That is, if a bin has a dozen boxes of spaghetti with expiration dates of 1/2023, 8/2022, and 4/2021, the Post-It on that bin will have a line:
Spaghetti 4/21
Of course, this assumes that when I grab a box of spaghetti, I'll make sure that I grab some 4/21 spaghetti, check the remaining spaghetti, and, if necessary, update that line to:
Spaghetti 8/22
Is that going to happen? Not sure. Edited to add: We did the whole mark-expiration-date thing starting about a month ago, so we haven't had a lot of data points. We do write BIG expiration dates on the packages with a Sharpie, so we can avoid the "Where is the expiration date on this thing?" delay.
If I want to relate this to GTD, I could have some repeating actions under my Keep Us Fed project:
Action: Find garage food expiring within a month and move it to house pantry.
Context: Garage
Repeat: Every two weeks
Action: Inventory garage food, update expiration notes, add missing Sharpie expiration dates.
Context: Garage
Repeat: Every two months
Edited to add: All of this is due to stocking extra food to minimize grocery trips. Pre-pandemic, I didn't need any system beyond occasionally (every year or so) checking canned good dates to catch them in time to donate.
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mcogilvie
Registered
Easy. I check the date when I go to use it.
Oogiem
Registered
I basically ignore them. 99% of them are irrelevant as stuff gets used up far before the real expiration date.
And then ther eis the issue that expirations dates are often not set by any real standard fo healthfulness, or loss of nutrition but by arcane laws that ignroe the vagries of storage conditions and better technology for food preservation than when the laws were written. The USDA is notorious for saying things have exoired months or years before there is any real issue.
We just enjoyed a nice chuck roast from the previous steer. It's been in the freezer since fall of 2016. Perfectly good and very tasty. Proper packaging and a freezer at below zero and closer to -10 is all it takes to keep meat safely for years. We have some other meat from a deer from even older that we are slowly eating because it's hot sausage and I can't eat it so it only gets used when we have guests who like hot foods and I can justify thawing out a whole pound of it.
I do run thrugh makeup about every 2 years or so and dump any that's looking off and I just flat dump it if it's 5 years or older. I put the date of purchase in sharpie pen on the bottom of the container.
TesTeq
Registered
Here is my take on the expiration date issue. In 2018 I decided to stop drinking RedBull. Here is the last can that reminds me about this resolution. I keep it in my fridge but I cannot drink it because it expired. I cannot buy a new one because I still have one! 
@mcogilvie @Oogiem #LifeHack
@mcogilvie @Oogiem #LifeHackWhen I've eaten food past its expiration date, I've usually found it to taste at least slightly "off". And that was usually, "Urgh. This tastes...oh. Expired," rather than "Huh. Expired. Let's see how it tastes," so I don't think I was influenced by the date.
Admittedly, I am extra extra EXTRA sensitive to things like rancid flavors. For me, the expiration dates and best by dates do seem to have some meaning, at least for non-frozen food. For frozen food, my tolerance for when to eat meat rather than throw it out is partially influenced by how much fat content it has--I do get a rancid vibe from frozen fat after two or three years. So I'd throw out chicken thighs at an age when I'd use boneless skinless chicken breasts.
(I'd follow expiration dates and fairly strict freezer-age rules even if they didn't seem to have meaning, because my mother was a hoarder and I guard against slippery slopes.)
mcogilvie
Registered
How do you get expiration dates on the fruits and vegetables you raise in your garden?
mcogilvie
Registered
Brilliant! I’m going to mark as expired a whole bunch of stuff I don’t want to do, put it all in the refrigerator, and tell everyone I can’t take on any more because of the backlog.Here is my take on the expiration date issue. In 2018 I decided to stop drinking RedBull. Here is the last can that reminds me about this resolution. I keep it in my fridge but I cannot drink it because it expired. I cannot buy a new one because I still have one!
Heh. They usually announce the onset of decay in an un-subtle manner. But I have started putting "frozen on" dates on things like homemade tomato puree.How do you get expiration dates on the fruits and vegetables you raise in your garden?
Oogiem
Registered
Asa question are most of the foods processed ones? I'm asking because this got me to thinking. I tend to store and save base ingredients not fully processed meals or highly processed foods other than sauces like sy sauce or hoisin sauce.
When COVID-19 hit we were pretty well set up to last for quite a while without any grocery store visits because we were in the ramp up to lambing when I naturally store a lot of food for quick meals as I don't have time to cook then. But it's food I make myself from plain ingredients. A big batch of chili made from tomatoes, meat, fresh onions and canned plain beans. Frozen into meal size servings.
The fat rancid issue in frozen stuff would lead me to immediately check my freezer temperature. Any standard house refridgerator will not keep frozen goods for much longer than the USDA guidelines. But any decent freezer set to below zero will keep stuff for years without any problems.
I use a dry erase marker on glass and plastic container with the contents and a month and year I put it in the freezer. Dry erase is wasahble off the containers and I don't need the day.
OliverG
Registered
Well, we usually don't buy
a) large quantities of canned food
b) more than we would consume until the expiration date
So say if we have 9 or 12 litres of "H" milk (German term maybe), the'd last for half a year. Then again they are gone after 3 weeks. So we put the old ones on top if we buy new ones before all are used up.
With oil and vinegar etc. we buy a two new ones when we open the last one.
Rice, noodles etc. keep for ages. And if they are behind date you can pretty much ignore it. In general we try to buy fresh food.
When we buy fresh pasta or ground cheese or canned fish we put the old ones on top and the new ones to the bottom of the pile, with joghurts we put the new ones in the back.
And again: we usually don't buy more than we use up in that time. And try not to have large fridges.
If anything goes bad it is fresh bread (in warmer weather or say, after 1 week, I am talking German bread, not what you want to call bread ) or very very rarely vegetables. Both carry no expiration dates. IF we know we bought too much bread we deep freeze it and mostly eat it "in time" because we need the room in the (not too big) freezer.
a) large quantities of canned food
b) more than we would consume until the expiration date
So say if we have 9 or 12 litres of "H" milk (German term maybe), the'd last for half a year. Then again they are gone after 3 weeks. So we put the old ones on top if we buy new ones before all are used up.
With oil and vinegar etc. we buy a two new ones when we open the last one.
Rice, noodles etc. keep for ages. And if they are behind date you can pretty much ignore it. In general we try to buy fresh food.
When we buy fresh pasta or ground cheese or canned fish we put the old ones on top and the new ones to the bottom of the pile, with joghurts we put the new ones in the back.
And again: we usually don't buy more than we use up in that time. And try not to have large fridges.
If anything goes bad it is fresh bread (in warmer weather or say, after 1 week, I am talking German bread, not what you want to call bread
) or very very rarely vegetables. Both carry no expiration dates. IF we know we bought too much bread we deep freeze it and mostly eat it "in time" because we need the room in the (not too big) freezer.Hmmm. The latest were:
- Some crackers with bits of fruit--so, that was processed. These had actually started to mold.
- Some raw nuts only barely past their expiration date, AND they'd been in the fridge for most of their lives, had that faint rancid taste. I'm not sure what to think about this--I wonder if they were stored in severe heat before they ever got to me.
- Couscous--the itty bitty bits, not the "real" large-ball couscous--always tastes off if it's past its date, and also starts to taste off shortly after the box is opened, if it wasn't stored in the fridge.
- Panko crumbs about six months expired--rancid again.
- Roasted salted sunflower seeds taste rancid soon after their expiration date. On the other hand, totally raw shelled sunflower seeds seem to be fine forever.
It's entirely possible that I'm just wildly oversensitive to the faintest and most harmless hint of a rancid flavor, and that the expiration date is just right for my sensitivity. The guy in my house didn't taste anything weird about the chicken, and nobody got sick.
Oogiem
Registered
Of the things you mentioned I would store in the freezer the nuts, the panko and the sunflower seeds and we don't eat couscous so no comments there. Also don't generaly get crackers with stuff in them either.- Some crackers with bits of fruit--so, that was processed. These had actually started to mold.
- Some raw nuts only barely past their expiration date, AND they'd been in the fridge for most of their lives, had that faint rancid taste. I'm not sure what to think about this--I wonder if they were stored in severe heat before they ever got to me.
- Couscous--the itty bitty bits, not the "real" large-ball couscous--always tastes off if it's past its date, and also starts to taste off shortly after the box is opened, if it wasn't stored in the fridge.
- Panko crumbs about six months expired--rancid again.
- Roasted salted sunflower seeds taste rancid soon after their expiration date. On the other hand, totally raw shelled sunflower seeds seem to be fine forever.
For me a freezer is so critical that I can't imagine life without one. Even when we had a small house with "no room" for a big chest freezer we bought one anyway and put it in the living room.
When a freezer is involved, yep, the printed expiration dates are totally irrelevant. If it's a frost-free freezer, there will be a new schedule of deterioration, but it will likely be much, much longer.