Keeping Your Pantry PCS-Ready All Year Long

 Like many military families, my family had a pre-moving tradition of figuring out how to eat all the food that has accumulated in our freezer, refrigerator and pantry. After over many years and many Permanent Change of Station moves, I finally got the process down. Better yet, I figured out how to make this part of our regular routine, so we aren’t scrambling during the last few months before the move. Even though our family isn’t moving any more, this process helps reduce food waste, which reduces our food costs.

It is kind of silly how happy this makes me. But our first move was a pantry disaster. We were young, and had a tight budget. The trunk full of food that I donated to the food bank represented money that we could have spent in much smarter ways. I knew there had to be a better way.

Meal Planning

This strategy works best in conjunction with meal planning. It will still be helpful if you don’t plan your meals, but it won’t be as successful. So how do you meal plan? Everyone has a slightly different system, but my system starts with an inventory of what we have.

Each week (or 10 days, or two weeks), I go through the freezer to see what interesting things are lurking there, and checking out the perishables hiding in the refrigerator. I then build a plan for the upcoming meals, and I include all the perishables and some of the frozen foods. This reduces food waste and helps to use foods while they are still fresh.

Including the Pantry In Your Kitchen Inventory

The PCS-ready pantry plan is an extension of  “checking the freezer.” I mentally divided our food storage places into sections. In our current house, there are about 12 shelves in the pantry. We’re blessed with a large pantry, but that blessing can turn into a nightmare without a system.

Every time I make a meal plan, I go through one or two or three of these shelves. I tidy up, identify things that are near their expiration date (or that I’ve overbought), and pick out items that could be used for upcoming meals. For example, a few weeks back I was on the bean/tomato shelf, and realized that we had too many lentils. It was super-simple to add some lentil soup to the menu one day. On another shelf, we also had an abundance of taco shells, so Taco Tuesday made the list.

When I’m not sure what to do with an item, the internet is an excellent resource. I enter whatever ingredients I want to use and the search engine provides me with a huge list of options. Alternately, I go to one of my favorite recipe sites and enter the ingredient in their search bar.

I’ve been doing this for about 10 years now. While things still get a little backed up, it isn’t nearly as out of control as it used to be. And next time we move, unloading the pantry will be a lot less painful.

Moving this summer? Check out my Ultimate PCS Guide to Packing Out to Make Your PCS Move Smooth and Organized.