pantry inventory apps?

[ratcreature]

Currently I jot down the expiration dates for foods I buy in a notebook every time I put away new groceries, because I figured it would be easier to notice foods that are close to expiration date by looking through a notebook every now and then rather than going through my pantry shelves. But this method isn't very convenient either.

I don't use a spreadsheet, because I want to do the entry in my kitchen as I put away groceries. So I don't want to do tedious data entry afterwards. But it occurred to me that doing this with a phone app could possibly work with scanning codes, and not take that much longer for the entry, and get me to a sortable inventory with expiration alerts.

However I do not want an app that collects and monetizes my grocery shopping data with their company and then shows me personalized grocery shopping ads, or tracks my shopping habits and then sells data about pantries or such (even in aggregate or "anonymized"). I want an app that keeps a database of my food strictly on my phone and doesn't use it for anything. I don't intend to manually do the work of a surveillance "smart" fridge for anybody.

Are there such apps? The popular ones like "Out of Milk" seem to be the convenience in exchange for consent to surveillance type...

Comments

[laurajv]

I haven’t found one, which is irritating.

What I do is have different pages for different months. So I always have a list of what expires next bc it’s in the next month’s page, and don’t have to go through the notebook looking.

[ratcreature]

That's an idea, though it makes it harder to see what products you currently have. Since I store some reserve stuff in plastic boxes rather than just shelves, which I use mostly for opened packages, that is also important to me. I have organized my book with a page for each staple, and then cross out the expiry date of the one in use when I open something.

But I have now actually found a free Android app that looks like it just stores the data locally and doesn't sign you into anything, and it doesn't display ads either. It is rather bare bones, the interface isn't the slickest, and it looks like the data export/backup is still in beta. And the code scanner uses an open source database that frequently doesn't find my items, but I'm trying it out right now.

It's in German, but if you want to check it out it's called Vorratsübersicht: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.stryi.Vorratsuebersicht