Moving house leaves a lot of questions out there for people to linger on. One of those questions is what to do with any food that’s left in your fridge or pantry. Do you throw it away, recycle it, eat it or give it away to friends and family? How do you pack the food you want?
We can give you some tips and tricks plus a bit of advice on all of those things without a doubt.
As always, if you need help with moving out your belongings, turn to the professional H2H Movers team, and they will help out. Check out the H2H Movers Chicago website and book your date!
Now, let’s get on with this small article on the best tips for handling leftover food when moving.
Inspect the Food and Sort it Out
The first step is to take out all of the food that’s left and carefully inspect it. When you have your food, go through all places – cupboards, freezer, fridge, basement, pantry, and others. Check for the expiration dates and overall states of the food. Will you eat it if it’s intact, or will it stay for six more months stashed somewhere and gather dust?
Once you have it all in one place, it’s time to sort it out in categories like frozen food, refrigerated food, canned food, boxed and bottled food, cooking supplies, and more.
You can take a notebook and start writing, kind of like making inventory to have a better view of all things.
Throw Away or Recycle
The natural reaction to expired food is to throw it away, and that’s the right thing to do. Don’t eat any food past its expiration date since the risk of food poisoning could be very high.
Once you throw all of the expired food away, you should try and finish up the good food that’s left. Limit your visits to your supermarket and get only food that you can consume before leaving. Focus on using the perishable food and use up any leftover food supplies. DO NOT order food.
The next thing you can do is to donate, and this includes non-perishable food items like bottled food items, boxed food items, and canned foods. You can donate them to families in your neighborhood, organizations like the Move for Hunger one, and many other options for you to choose from.
Packing up the Food
Packing the food could be tricky if you don’t know the right way to do it.
For example, canned foods can be packed in small cardboard boxes due to their collective weight. Another good moving container idea is using plastic storage bins that won’t break.
You can pack dry food products like pasta, sugar, flour, and rice in zip-loc bags if they are open already. Then put the bags in small to medium boxes.
When it comes to glass containers, you can wrap any jars or bottles in sheets of soft packing paper, tape the paper, and transfer the items in moving boxes.
Use additional pieces of paper to fill holes in the boxes between the items to prevent them from breaking. You can take quality packing from one of the best moving companies, a.k.a H2H Movers.
Generally, we recommend not taking a lot of food because it will be costly to transport it and you won’t consume it anyways. Calculate the odds and be smart because each item makes the moving that much more expensive, especially when it comes to long-distance moving.
We wish you happy moving!