Tips on how to organize your shopping and pantry efficiently

Organizing your shopping at home can be a bit of a headache, especially if you're the head of the household. Organizing your pantry properly to know what you have and what you don't may be a challenge for some of us. The socioeconomic context in which we find ourselves urges us to take steps to spend just what is necessary on food, but also to do so efficiently, such as avoiding food waste and eating healthy.

You may be interested in home organization but don't have the time. Or you may simply not be interested at all. But either way, if you start putting these simple tips into practice now, you can get better organized so you can eat better and save money .

Let's go for it: first, do your shopping in two ways:

• Single source: Consider buying everything from one source, usually in large stores, for both non-perishable and fresh items. This system requires us to go to large stores at least once a week.
• Various suppliers: Buy non-perishable products in supermarkets and fresh products at the market or neighborhood stores. This technique allows you to visit supermarkets less frequently and shop for fresh products in smaller stores, which shortens your shopping time and allows you to purchase more recommended products.

When choosing stores to shop at, consider:

• Closeness: We waste much less time if we choose nearby stores. Neighborhood stores often deliver to our homes and allow us to have direct contact with the products.
• Variety: It is preferable to choose a place where you can find several things rather than going from store to store.
• Price: There are online comparisons of different supermarkets, although when evaluating them, it's important to keep in mind that the same supermarket chain sets different prices depending on the store. It's important to consider hidden costs, such as VAT or home delivery, when making the comparison.
• On-line: It allows us to shop at any time and compare different sites. It often also allows us to find things that aren't available in physical stores. Generally, online stores, both large retailers and small suppliers, have regular shopping carts that we can save from time to time, allowing us to buy quickly. It's not possible to select the product, but small suppliers are usually good at responding when a product doesn't meet the expected quality.

How to make a purchase

The best way to maximize our purchases and not buy too much or too little is to follow these guidelines:

• Prepare a list: We can have it in the kitchen and write down what we are running out of, thus avoiding forgetfulness or digitally.
• Think about what dishes you're going to want to cook that week: being flexible, but having an initial idea.
• Guide us by the season: The list shouldn't be fixed; it's better to write "vegetables" on the list and see what's in season, than to write "zucchini" and not buy wonderful artichokes. The way to vary our diet and eat better (and more affordably!) is to be guided by seasonality.
• Buy in the right quantities: Consider whether or not you have enough storage space (which will allow you to take advantage of 3-for-2 discounts and similar). It's essential to consider the storage capacity of both your pantry and freezer. This way, you'll know if you can afford to buy more or less.
• What you don't want to eat, you don't buy: This maxim will help us eat better, make more varied and healthy meals, and avoid snacking on unhealthy foods between meals. It's very simple: if we open the fridge and find lots of fruit and no chocolate, we'll eat fruit.

When to buy

Once we've organized where and how we're going to shop, we must establish a routine, which will depend on all of the above. Start by setting a day a week to shop, preferably not Monday (it's the worst day to find fresh produce). Depending on the number of people shopping, Wednesday is usually the most comfortable day to do the shopping, by delivery shifts and variety of goods.

How to store food

When you get home, you have a very important task: organizing your shopping and putting everything back in its place. This shouldn't be done haphazardly; we recommend following these guidelines:

Freezer

• Meat and fish drawer
• Drawer of vegetables, breads, pizzas and ready-made dishes
• Ice and ice cream drawer

Fridge

• Vegetable and fruit drawer
• Shelf of meat, fish and eggs
• Dairy shelf
• Shelf of sauces, jams, beer...

Pantry

• Breakfast area: coffee, breads, honey…
• Nuts and snacks area
• Pasta, rice and legume area
• Area for ingredients such as flour or breadcrumbs
• Spice Zone
• Canned goods and preserves area

It is important, mainly in the freezer and the pantry, Rotate products well to always pick the oldest ones and prevent things from spoiling. It's recommended that, before storing fresh produce or a home-prepared dish in the freezer, we write down the freezing date with a marker.

Let us not forget Empty the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator one day every two or three months to make sure everything is fresh and that we know exactly what we have stored.