It’s Tuesday night and you’re standing in the pantry holding a third jar of cumin. The freezer is a tundra of mystery foil packets. A bag of brown sugar has fused into a brick because no one knew it was there. You came home to cook, and instead you’re playing archaeologist.
A pantry inventory spreadsheet usually does not fix that. It gives you a table and leaves the work to you: you type everything in, then you still have to sort it, filter it, and read it to work out what to buy and what to eat. This one reads itself. You type what you have, where it lives, and how much you want to keep on hand — and the workbook writes two tabs for you.
The shopping list writes itself
Every item that has fallen Low Stock or run Out of Stock appears on the Shopping List tab automatically, grouped in your own category order so it reads roughly in aisle order, with how many to buy — rounded up to whole units, because you cannot buy 0.75 of a bottle — and an estimated total at the top. Change a number on the inventory and the list changes with it. There is nothing to sort and nothing to filter; the only column you touch is the tick box. The list holds the first 60 items needing restock, and tells you at the top if there are more.
The “how many to buy” is not a guess either. You set a Keep on hand level once — a par level, the way a professional kitchen does it — and the workbook works out the quantity that gets you back to it. Not just enough to clear the low-stock trigger, which is how a pantry quietly ratchets downward, but back to where you wanted to be.
And so does the “what should I cook?” list
The Use It Up tab is the other half. Everything with a date inside your Use Soon window, plus anything already past its date, sorted soonest first (the 40 soonest, and it says so if there are more), with the days left and where to find it. Look at it before you open the fridge, not after. The one column you fill in is the plan — and “Friday soup” counts as a plan.
Every item gets one of five states
The Kitchen Inventory tab is the engine. For each row it calculates the value on hand, how many to buy, the days left on the date, and a color-coded status: In Stock, Low Stock, Out of Stock, Use Soon, or Expired. Out of Stock and Expired are simply facts — nothing on hand, or a date that has passed. The other two are yours to tune: one threshold on the Setup tab sets how many days counts as “use soon”, the other sets how low is low, and each is a single cell.
The freezer stops being archaeology
Frozen food kept constantly at 0 °F stays safe indefinitely, according to the USDA — and that is exactly why the freezer eats things: nothing ever visibly spoils, so nothing ever prompts you. The Freezer Log fixes it with the one fact that matters — the date it went in. Log what it is, pick the food type from the dropdown, and the workbook looks up the recommended freezer time on the storage reference and calculates the use-by date for you.
Know whether a price is actually good
The Price Book is the oldest trick in careful shopping, and the one a spreadsheet does better than a person. Log a staple’s package price and size; the workbook works out the unit price, remembers the lowest one you have ever recorded for that item at any store, and tells you where today’s price sits — Best price yet, Good deal, or Above your best. Ten staples across the two shops you actually use is enough to change how you buy.
The number that changes the habit
The Waste & Savings Log is the tab nobody wants and everybody needs. Log what gets thrown out for one month — what it was, roughly what it cost, and whether it could have been avoided. The avoidable total on the dashboard is usually the moment this stops being a spreadsheet and starts being a habit.
What’s in the workbook
Eleven tabs: a Read Me, a Start Here Checklist with a done-count, Setup, the Kitchen Inventory, the Shopping List, Use It Up, the Freezer Log, the Price Book, the Waste & Savings Log, a 73-food Storage Life Reference (the refrigerator and freezer times for meat, poultry, seafood, eggs and leftovers follow the USDA’s Cold Food Storage Chart; the rest is general guidance), and a Kitchen Dashboard that rolls all of it up — value on hand, what needs buying, what needs eating, and where in the house the value actually sits.
Three PDFs come with it: an eight-section Start Here guide, a Food Storage and Price Book Playbook (the storage chart in print, plus the price-book method), and Printable Kitchen Pages for the fridge door if you would rather not keep a spreadsheet at all.
Try it first, free
Not sure yet? The free Pantry Inventory Starter is the same status engine on a single tab — it opens on a worked example, flags In Stock, Low Stock, Out of Stock, Use Soon and Expired, and works out how many to buy. No email, no signup. The full workbook is what adds the two tabs it writes for you.
Set it up in twenty minutes
Do not inventory your kitchen. Inventory one shelf, and then stop. Rename the categories to yours, list what is on one shelf, and fill in Keep on hand for the twenty things you never want to run out of. That is enough to make the shopping list start working. Do the next shelf when you next put the groceries away — which is the only moment when updating it is nearly free.
Works where you do — and you own it
One file, three apps: Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice Calc. The Google Sheets version is not an import you have to fix afterwards — it is a real, tested, native copy. Click one link, choose Make a copy, and it lands in your Drive with every formula, dropdown and color already working.
A pantry app only knows what it can scan, and it depends on a company staying in business. This file holds your kitchen — every shelf, the prices you actually pay, the freezer, what you threw out — and it is yours. No login, no subscription, nothing to lose. Buy it once, and it still opens in ten years.
A kitchen record, not food-safety advice. This workbook helps you track what is in your kitchen and roughly how long things keep. Refrigerator and freezer times for meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, deli salads and leftovers follow the USDA’s Cold Food Storage Chart at FoodSafety.gov; times for dairy, produce, breads, condiments and pantry goods are general guidance, because the USDA chart does not cover them. Real storage life depends on your appliance temperatures, how the food was handled, and the package. A date the workbook calculates is a prompt to go and look at something, never a verdict on whether it is safe. Follow the label, trust your own eyes and nose, and when in doubt, throw it out.
