Try it with MononoMori
In MononoMori, record expiry dates for what's stocked in your kitchen, medicine box and vanity, and let Falling Leaves remind you before things expire.
Hello everyone, I’m Windmori.
A few days ago I wanted to make braised pork belly. The soy sauce by the stove was nearly empty, so I opened the top cupboard, and there was an unopened bottle.
I was pleased, until I looked at the label: its best-before date had passed this spring.
Further back, a packet of noodles I’d stocked up on last year and two cans of tomatoes bought on sale were also past their dates. When they came home, every one of them was meant to be “just in case.”
Why Does Stock Always Expire at the Back of the Cupboard?
This isn’t one person’s carelessness. Figures from Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency put household food loss in Japan at about 2.33 million tonnes in fiscal year 2023. Medicine is no different: a survey of more than four thousand people in Australia found that six in ten kept medicine at home “just in case,” and about a third of those medicines had expired.
From an organizing point of view, things usually don’t expire because they “went bad.” They expire because they were forgotten:
- New stock hides the old: Whatever you just bought goes in at the front, and the bottle you bought first gets pushed to the back.
- The dates are printed too small: Best-before dates hide on the bottom of a bottle or the side of a box. You can’t see them without picking things up.
- Spares don’t get looked at much anyway: The medicine box, the backup skincare, the pantry shelf are rarely opened. Go through them once a year and what you find is a pile of things that have already expired.
So the question isn’t whether to stock up. It’s whether you’ll remember what you’ve stocked before it expires.
The Turning Point: Let the Forest Remember the Dates
1. Record the “Expiry Date” When You Bring It Home
When you add food, medicine or skincare to MononoMori, enter the date on the package as its “Expiry Date.” As soon as that field has a value, the reminders described below start working on their own.
If you have several of the same thing with different dates (say, milk bought on two separate trips), it’s best to record them as two items, so each one has its own date.
When you bring home a lot of things from the same batch, long-press to select them in “Items,” open “Batch Actions,” and use “Expiry” to give them all the same date at once.
2. “Expiry Reminder”: One Week, Three Days, One Day
In the “Expiry Reminder” settings you can turn on three reminders separately: “One week ahead,” “Three days ahead” and “One day ahead.” All three are on by default. The “Reminder Time” is 9 a.m. by default, and you can change it to whenever suits you better, such as just before you leave work or before your grocery run.
Reminders rely on iOS notification permissions. If you’ve never received one, check in your iPhone’s Settings that notifications are turned on for MononoMori.
3. “Falling Leaves”: Decide What Stays, All in One Place
Tap an expiry reminder and you’ll land in “Falling Leaves.” Here, items that have expired or are about to are lined up in a single list, and you can decide on each one right there:
- “Renew”: You’ve bought a replacement, or you’ve checked and it’s still fine. Pick a new expiry date.
- “Later”: No time to deal with it today. Leave it for now.
- “Farewell”: It really should go. The item moves to the Recycle Bin, and you can still get it back within 30 days.
There’s no need to open each item’s detail page. In a few minutes you can see to a whole cupboard’s worth of “falling leaves.”
4. Take a Look Without Waiting for a Notification
- The “Falling Leaves” home screen widget: Put it on your home screen and every time you unlock your phone you’ll see the next item that needs attention.
- Filter in “Items”: Choose “Expiring Soon” (within 30 days) under “Expiry Status,” or sort by “Expiry Date,” to see at a glance what should be used up first.
My own habit: before the weekend grocery run, I open “Expiring Soon” and take a look. A can of tomatoes close to its date decides that week’s menu.
A Few Honest Words
- MononoMori doesn’t remind you separately about how long something keeps once opened. Many skincare products and condiments only last 6 or 12 months after opening, but in the app only the Expiry Date triggers reminders. What I do: on the day I open something, I change its Expiry Date to the opening date plus its after-opening period, and the reminders follow the new date.
- A Warranty Date doesn’t trigger reminders. Only the Expiry Date does.
- Reminders come in three steps: one week, three days and one day. You can switch each on or off, but you can’t set other numbers of days.
Start with One Cupboard
You don’t need to record every bag of snacks in the house. Pick the one place where things most often expire:
- the spice or snack cupboard where most of your stock lives;
- the family medicine box that gets opened once or twice a year;
- the vanity drawer with spare moisturizer and sunscreen.
Record the dates for what’s in that one place. The first time Falling Leaves helps you use up something just before it expires, you’ll see why it’s worth doing.
If you’d like to turn your medicine box into a checklist you can go through item by item, have a look at Baskets and Checklist Mode from Vol. 2 of this series.
A Final Note from the Forest
In the end, I poured that expired soy sauce away.
But since that day, every new bottle in the cupboard has its own date. A few days ago, MononoMori reminded me that a packet of noodles had three days left, and that night we had a big pot of hot noodle soup.
When the things we stock up on get used up properly, that’s probably the best way to honor them, and the “just in case” care we bought them with.
Which cupboard in your home is most likely to hide something expired?
Hope today’s Life & Features issue brings a spark of inspiration to your organization journey.
See you next time in the forest. 🌿
