Freezer inventory
A freezer list that lives in your own browser: what went in, how much, when, and the quality window its card publishes — so the oldest thing is the first thing you see. No account, nothing uploaded.
What is in there, and what is oldest?
| Item | Amount | Frozen | Age | Use by | Remove |
|---|
The window that comes with a suggestion is the same one its food card publishes, read from the site’s own registry — so if a window is corrected, your list picks the correction up the next time you open this page. Food you type without picking a suggestion is kept as you wrote it, with no window attached rather than an invented one.
The freezer is the one shelf nobody audits
Every other part of a kitchen is self-correcting: a fridge you open twice a day, a pantry you can see into. A chest freezer is a white box with a lid, and the food in it only announces itself when you dig it out. That is the entire mechanism behind the mystery roast and the fourth bag of peas — not carelessness, just absence of information.
A list fixes the two things that actually happen. It tells you what to buy, because you can see you already have it. And it orders the queue by age, so the oldest thing gets used first instead of being buried under the new shopping — which is the difference between a freezer that saves money and one that quietly loses it.
What people actually ask
Where is my list stored?
In this browser, on this device, under a key called cift-inventory-v1 — and nowhere else. There is no account, no server round trip and no analytics on the contents. The trade is that clearing site data or switching device loses it, which is why the page also prints.
How do I keep a freezer inventory up to date?
Add the item the moment it goes in — the date frozen is the only field that matters and the only one nobody remembers afterwards. Then take things off the list as you use them, and start each shopping trip at the oldest row rather than at the supermarket. An inventory that is a week out of date is still better than none.
What does the "use by" date mean?
It is the food’s own quality window, counted from the day you froze it — not a safety deadline. Food kept at 0 °F (−18 °C) is safe past it, just less good: softer texture, flatter flavour, and a drier surface. When a row goes red, move it to the front of the queue rather than to the bin.
Should I write dates on the packaging too?
Yes. The list is for planning at the shop or the doorway; the label is what you have in your hand when the freezer is open and your fingers are cold. Write the food and the date together — "chilli, 3 March" beats "3 March" every time.
Sources
Every figure this tool computes with is published guidance, cited here rather than summarized from memory. Where the published guidance is silent — a per-pound thawing rate for a cut nobody publishes one for, or how long a nearly empty freezer really holds — the tool says so and you get a check instead of an invented number.
- CDC — Keep Food Safe After an Emergency 4 hours for a closed refrigerator, 48 hours for a full freezer, 24 hours half-full, and what may be refrozen
- FDA — Food and Water Safety During Power Outages the same outage windows, and the 40 °F ice-crystal test for refreezing
- USDA FSIS — The Big Thaw refrigerator, cold-water and microwave thawing, and cooking from frozen
- USDA FSIS — Turkey Basics: Safe Thawing 24 hours per 4–5 lb in the refrigerator; 30 minutes per pound in cold water
- USDA FSIS — Freezing and Food Safety 0 °F, quality windows, and refreezing after a refrigerator thaw
- USDA FoodKeeper App the storage windows behind every food page on this site