How to Keep Track of Expiration Dates (The Easy Way)

If you've ever pulled something from the cupboard and found it expired months ago, the problem wasn't you — it was the system. Human memory is not a database. Here's what actually works.

Why most tracking systems fail

Almost everyone who tries to keep track of expiration dates starts with one of these:

• A spreadsheet or notes app. Works for a week. Fails the first time you unpack groceries in a hurry, because typing product names and dates by hand takes minutes per shopping trip.
• Labels and markers. Great for leftovers, useless for the forty packaged items already in your pantry — and the label doesn't remind you of anything.
• A monthly "pantry audit." Effective but painful, so it quietly stops happening after the second month.

All three fail for the same reason: they depend on you doing ongoing work. A system only survives if recording an item takes seconds and the remembering is done by something else.

The 10-second system

The reliable approach has three parts, and they map to exactly what an expiration date tracker app should do for you:

1. Record at the door. The moment groceries come home (or the moment you stock your pantry shelf), capture the expiry date. With RiScan you point your iPhone camera at the printed date — the app reads it automatically, including odd formats like “28.3.27”. No typing.
2. Attach the date to a photo. A date without context is useless three months later. RiScan has you snap a quick photo of the product, so “expires 12.11.2026” is always attached to that specific jar.
3. Let notifications do the remembering. The app watches your list and notifies you before anything expires — early enough that you can plan a meal around it rather than bin it.

Try it on tonight's groceries. RiScan is free for iPhone and iPad — scan the date, snap the product, done.

What to track (it's more than the fridge)

Once recording takes ten seconds, it's worth tracking categories you'd never put in a spreadsheet:

• Pantry staples — flour, oils, spices, and sauces expire slowly enough that nobody remembers buying them. See our pantry inventory guide.
• Medicine — painkillers and allergy meds in the bathroom cabinet. See do medicine expiration dates matter?
• Emergency supplies — canned goods, bottled water, and first aid kits need rotating on a multi-year cycle no human remembers. See keeping your emergency food supply fresh.

Reading the dates themselves

One quiet failure mode: writing down the wrong date. Packaging codes like “28.3.27” can mean 28 March 2027 or 27 March 2028 depending on the producer's country. RiScan recognizes over 70 date formats and interprets ambiguous ones when scanning — if you're curious how to decode them yourself, read how to read expiration date codes, and for what the dates legally mean, best before vs. use by.

The payoff

Households throw away significant money every year in expired food — most of it food that was simply forgotten. Tracking dates fixes the forgetting, which is the biggest lever there is; the rest of the food-waste playbook is in how to reduce food waste at home.