KITCHEN PRACTICE 3 — A Fridge Audit Using First-In-First-Out
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TASK
Go through your fridge, check dates on everything, move older items to
the front so they get used first, and identify (and discard) anything
past its use-by date or any undated leftover you can no longer
confidently place a date on.

WALKTHROUGH

Step 1 — Take everything out, briefly.
It's much easier to see what you actually have when the fridge isn't
half-hidden behind itself. Group items loosely as you go: raw meat,
dairy, condiments, leftovers, vegetables.

Step 2 — Check every date.
Use-by dates are a genuine safety limit — food shouldn't be eaten past
this date even if it looks and smells fine (this chapter's own point
about smell not being a reliable test). Best-before dates are about
quality, not safety, and are more of a judgement call.

Step 3 — Apply First-In-First-Out (FIFO).
As you put things back, place older items — earlier dates — at the
front and newer purchases behind them. The next time you reach for
that item, you naturally grab the one that needs using soonest, rather
than the one that's easiest to reach.

Step 4 — Deal with anything past its date.
  - Past use-by: discard, no exceptions, regardless of appearance.
  - Undated leftovers you genuinely can't place a date on: treat as
    past safe use — this chapter's own storage guide gives roughly
    3-4 days for most cooked leftovers, so anything you can't
    confidently place within that window is a discard, not a guess.

Step 5 — Put raw meat back on the bottom shelf.
While everything's out, double check raw meat, poultry, and fish are
stored on the bottom shelf specifically — below anything ready-to-eat —
so nothing can drip onto food that won't be cooked before eating.

Step 6 — Build the habit going forward.
Label leftovers with the date they were made when you put them in the
fridge, rather than trying to remember later. A small piece of tape
and a marker is all this takes, and it removes the "I genuinely don't
know how old this is" problem before it starts.

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WHY THIS MATTERS
FIFO is the same principle professional kitchens (and, for that
matter, warehouses) use to avoid waste and spoilage — the fix isn't
remembering everything perfectly, it's building a system where the
right item naturally ends up in reach first. Doing one real audit
makes the ongoing habit far easier to keep up afterward.