Four columns per line
Write each item as item | quantity | bought | where. Tabs work in place of pipes, so four columns copied out of a spreadsheet paste in without editing. Dates take either MM/DD/YYYY or the ISO form, and an unreadable date leaves the item in the list without a countdown rather than dropping it. The quantity column is free text: 2 lb, 1 bag, half a bunch all display as written, and only the leading number is read. That number matters in exactly one place. A zero means you are out, which puts the item on the shopping list.
The location column accepts fridge, freezer or pantry and a few synonyms around each. Left blank, it assumes the fridge and tells you how many lines it guessed on. Getting the freezer entries right matters more than the rest, because the difference between two days and nine months hangs on that one word.
How items get matched to the table
The item name is checked against a list of common groceries on whole words, so "Ground beef, 85/15" matches ground beef and "hamburger buns" does not match ham. When several entries match, the longest one wins: "ground beef" beats "beef" if both were present. Anything with no match at all is given a placeholder of five days in the fridge, sixty in the freezer and fourteen in the pantry, and is labelled in the table so you know the figure is a stand-in rather than a real estimate.
Some combinations have no sensible figure. Lettuce in the freezer is not a storage method anyone recommends, so those cells show a dash instead of a countdown rather than inventing a number.
What the numbers are, and what they are not
The storage lengths here are commonly published estimates for unopened items in ordinary home storage. Real life moves them in both directions. An unopened carton of milk on the back of the middle shelf outlasts an opened one in the door by a wide margin, because the door is the warmest part of the appliance and every reach for it lets warm air in. A fridge running at 40°F and one running at 34°F are not the same fridge. Cooked food cooled slowly in a deep container behaves differently from the same food spread thin and chilled fast.
Which is why this tool counts days and stops there. It does not tell you anything is safe to eat, or unsafe. That judgment is made at the food, by smell and appearance and texture, and if there is a date printed on the package, that printed date outranks anything on this page.
Date labels do not all mean the same thing
The phrases printed on packaging are not interchangeable, and most of them are about quality rather than safety. "Best if used by" is the manufacturer's estimate of peak flavour and texture; food past it is usually fine and simply not at its best. "Sell by" is aimed at the store's stock rotation, not at you, and normally leaves time at home afterwards. "Use by" is the one that most often carries a safety meaning, and on some products in some countries it is a hard line.
Which labels are required, what they must say and what they legally mean vary by country and sometimes by product category, and the rules change. Infant formula in particular is treated differently from other foods in several jurisdictions. This tool does not know your local labelling rules and does not try to interpret the label for you — it only counts forward from the day you wrote down. When the label and the countdown disagree, follow the label, and if you want to know what a specific phrase means where you live, look it up with your national food agency.
Getting the shopping list to work
Two things land on it. Anything you logged with a quantity of zero, and anything in the staples box that has no stocked match in the inventory. Matching is on whole words in either direction, so "Milk" in staples pairs with "Whole milk, 1 gal" in the inventory. An item logged at zero is listed once, under the name you wrote in the inventory, rather than twice under both names. Keep the staples list short and boring — the five things you always want in the house — and it stays useful; fill it with everything you have ever bought and every list will be long enough to ignore.
Questions people ask
Do I have to throw something out when the days-left number goes negative?
No, and the tool deliberately does not say that. All the number represents is a commonly published storage estimate subtracted from the day you wrote down, and it knows nothing about your fridge temperature, whether the package was opened, or how the food was handled. Plenty of food is fine past the estimate and some food is not fine well before it. Judge it at the food: smell it, look at it, feel the texture. If the package carries a printed date, that date takes precedence over anything here. If you are unsure and the food is one where being wrong matters, throwing it out costs a few dollars.
How do I handle something I have already opened?
Log it as a separate line with the date you opened it rather than the date you bought it, and add a word like "opened" to the name so you can tell the two apart. Most of the estimates in the table assume an unopened package, and opening one usually shortens the window substantially. Milk, deli meat and anything in a jar are the common cases. Doing it this way makes the countdown reflect the state the food is actually in, which is the whole point of the exercise.
Why is my item showing "no entry"?
Its name did not match anything in the storage table, so it was given a placeholder of five days in the fridge, sixty in the freezer or fourteen in the pantry, and flagged. The table covers common US groceries and is nowhere near exhaustive. Sometimes renaming helps: "chicken thighs" matches where "thighs" alone does not. When it genuinely is not covered, use the package for guidance and treat the countdown for that line as decoration.
Does the list save between visits?
It does not. Everything is computed in this browser tab and a refresh clears it; nothing is uploaded or stored. Use the copy-as-text box at the bottom, paste it into a notes app, and next time paste it back into the inventory field. The format round-trips, so you only have to change the dates on whatever you bought since. The printable sheet exists for the same reason — a tick-box list on the fridge door survives longer than an open browser tab.