The way I used to work , for the kitchen, was to always have one thing "on the go" and one spare at the ready. When I finished the first thing, I would deliberately leave the empty container on the worktop to remind me to get the next one, or add it to the shopping list. If there was a good offer on, of my regular things, I would buy a few more. My mother lived through the war, and she always had spare tins of food and at least 2 or 3 bags of flour or whatever, dont think she ever got out of the habit of getting things in when she could. It took me quite a time after my family were grown to cut down to a sensible amount.
These days you really see how quickly costs They go up, in a very short while, when you compare the prices. But I used to have a variety of things that were "in case" I had an unexpected visitor, and from the days of a hungry son and friends and my husband and hulking rugby players arriving, before that. I have now got round to having just a selection of things that I would use or enjoy and would just open the spare or extra thing if I needed to. Now it seems that the kitchen is the one place where I have something like order, apart from still keeping my tins for loaves of bread and cakes. I used to make my bread and it was lovely, and all the cakes. Being a diabetic now I dont make the cakes but somehow cannot bring myself to give away all the tins.Wish I could apply the same mentality to the rest of the flat!
