My husband is cleaning out the freezer. He did something similar last week in our pantry. Unfortunately he decided to throw out some cans of food that we probably have had since the days of our children believing in Santa!

He decided to place the cans that needed to be used soonest on a top shelf so that when meal planning, we would look to this cans first when deciding what to create for dinner.

He is going to use a similar method in our freezer. We have chicken dated April 2006, which means it is a few months past it's prime freezer life (9 months for chicken from the charts I have seen).

While making scones this morning (from scratch natch) DH brought in some mystery packages that we had properly sealed with our food sealer. One of them I recognize as Turkey soup base.

Now turkey is a great year round by and we usually pick up a few extra during the holidays. I feel very virtuously frugal as we simmer the carcass and then pick it clean. Unfortunately those frozen packages never seem to actually become soup!

DH also found a zip lock bag that had a few of his favorite teryaki marinated then barbecued chicken thighs. He was quite distressed when he realized he missed out on microwaving and enjoying one of his favorite foods.

So our goal is to organize and recognize that in order to be truly frugal, we must take that second step and actually eat our leftovers or second harvests. The first step is to have a set area to put those things, which in our case is the top shelf of our freezer and a top shelf in our pantry.

Happy Sunday!