During my Eat All the Things challenge, I came across a photo of a pantry with an Eat This First bin. I quickly repurposed a wooden box to make one of my own.
I didn’t bother to label mine, although I might if I had children. I temporarily let the bin live on my counter as a prompt to reach for this food before reaching for something unopened or non-perishable.
In went the already-opened bag of granola, the soon-to-be overripe fruit, the soon-to-be expired canned goods. I also added some consumable gifts that weren’t close to expiration, but didn’t fit neatly into my existing pantry management system. (As if the “Eat This First” bin is the only reason I immediately inhaled that chocolate bar….)
The Eat This First bin is such a simple solution in the fight against food waste and kitchen clutter, I started to think about how to apply the idea to other areas.
I started with a Use This First reminder in the bathroom to wrangle three different half-empty bottles of lotion, a travel-sized conditioner, and a tube of toothpaste I don’t really love but I’m going to use up anyway. (Toothpaste is on my nopping list for another long while because I was very overeager with a coupon at BJ’s.)
I designated a Wear This First section of my closet to nudge me to create new outfit combinations and ensure I’m actually wearing all of my presentable summer dresses and not just my favorite casual (cough cough tattered) denim shorts.
I made a Read This First stack of books and magazines to get a jump on completing them and clearing them out of my house. I’ll return them to the library, or lend them to an interested reader, or rehome them in the Little Free Library.
“This First” can go hand-in-hand with weeding. We’ll use up the consumable objects that are competing for prime real estate with our favorites, and we’ll give a little audition to the clothing and media that we haven’t engaged with in awhile to determine if it goes back into the active rotation or goes into that other very important bin we should have in our homes: the Donate bin.