Use-by is a safety line. Best-before is a quality line. Holdfast can tell them apart if you do.
Two different promises
On food, a use-by date is about safety. After it, the risk of illness rises, especially for meat, fish, dairy, and ready meals. Do not stretch those to “see”. A best-before date is about quality: the food may be drier, duller, or softer, and is often still fine if the pack is intact, smells right, and has been stored properly. When you log an item, set the toggle to the words printed on the pack.
Gear does not go “off” the same way, but batteries leak, medicines expire, fuel goes stale, and water tastes tired. Give those an inspect-by date so they surface in Replace beside the food.
First in, first eaten
Put newer stock at the back. It sounds fussy until you own twenty tins of the same beans. A marker pen on the lid with the month and year beats squinting at a stamped code. Holdfast’s list, sorted by date, is the same idea for the whole cellar.
The Replace view is your shopping list. Expired and “soon” items are what to eat this week or buy again. Fourteen days is the default “soon” window. If something will be hard to replace — a prescription, a specific baby formula, a fuel canister — log it early and do not wait for the red badge.
When a date is missing
Salt, sugar, and honey barely care. Rice and pasta care about pests and moisture more than the calendar. Still give them a review date, perhaps a year out, so you open the bucket and look. “No date” should mean you decided, not that you forgot.
If a can is swollen, leaking, or badly rusted, the printed date is irrelevant. Bin it. If a pouch of freeze-dried food is puffed or the seal is broken, do the same. Your nose and the pack are the last inspectors.
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