Shelves and categories: how to organize your pantry
What a shelf is, what a category is and why they are not the same thing. Examples to organize your pantry in Despendo without confusing the math.
The first time you open Despendo you see a pantry with shelves and jars. Two ideas are worth separating right away, because everything else depends on them (days of food, water, the shopping list): the shelf and the category.
Shelf: where you keep it
A shelf is a container, like a real shelf. You name it whatever you like: "Kitchen pantry", "Garage", "Small fridge" or "Grandma's cupboard". It makes your screen look like your home so you can find things where you left them.
Category: what it is
The category describes what the product is. It is an official list, the same for every account, maintained by Despendo. You cannot invent new categories, and that is on purpose: if everyone had their own, the calculations could not be compared or explained.
There are 17 today:
- Food: Grains, Legumes, Proteins, Dairy, Fats & oils, Sugars & sweeteners, Fruits & vegetables, Ready meals, Condiments & sauces, Beverages and Baby.
- Things you do not eat: Water, Personal hygiene, Cleaning, First aid & medicine and Pets.
- Other, for what truly does not fit anywhere.
How it comes is not a category
A common question: "what about canned food?". A can is a way of packaging food, not a kind of food. So Despendo handles it with the unit, not the category:
| Product | Category | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Canned tuna | Proteins | lata(s) (cans) |
| Canned beans | Legumes | lata(s) |
| Canned corn | Fruits & vegetables | lata(s) |
| Instant soup | Ready meals | sobre(s) (packets) |
| Cooking oil | Fats & oils | botella(s) (bottles) |
Available units are unid. (unit), kg, g, lb, l, ml, paquete(s) (packages), lata(s) (cans), frasco(s) (jars), botella(s) (bottles), bolsa(s) (bags), caja(s) (boxes) and sobre(s) (packets); for now they appear with their Spanish names in the app. That way your cans of tuna count as protein, which is what they are, and you still see how many cans you have.
The rules that prevent chaos
- When you create a shelf you choose its category, or "Mixed" if you will store several kinds. The name is free.
- If you add a product from inside a shelf that has a category, the product goes into that category. You cannot put sugar on the Grains shelf by accident.
- If the shelf is Mixed, you choose each product's category.
- With the + button you can add a product directly: you pick the category and Despendo suggests the matching shelf.
- Each shelf shows a label with its category, so it is clear at a glance. Older shelves that do not have one yet say "No category set": edit them and choose one.
- A category is required when you create a product. It is what lets Despendo calculate your days of food.
An example
Say your home has a shelf called "Garage" where you keep bulk purchases: sacks of rice, cooking oil, water and pet food. You create it as Mixed and give each product its category: Grains, Fats & oils, Water and Pets. On screen you see everything together, like in your garage, but for the calculations each item counts where it belongs, and the pet food does not count toward your family's days of food.
If instead you have a shelf only for legumes, you create it with the Legumes category and every jar you add is organized without a second thought.
What all this is for
Each product's category feeds Despendo's calculations: your days of food (which do not count only calories), days of water, the hygiene panel and the shopping list. The shelf can be as personal as your home; the category is what keeps the numbers honest.
And if you want everything you organized to stay fresh, combine it with FIFO rotation: what expires first goes in front.
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