Or, guys can always take the food and leave an epic note like this guy
Oh how I envy you. My flatmate really doesn’t get the concept that I shouldn’t have to take a share in the responsibility for his lack of willingness to go out and buy food, or his lack of foresight the last time he went out.
Same in my house - I’m all for leftover, personally. Them others - I think they have some snob gene about leftovers (Ooo, icky! What if someone sees them!)
So, I frequently see one of them pop open the fritch (which is full, by the way) and moan, “there ain’t nothin’ to eat!” :dubious:
Exactly, nothing but left over pasta, a half steak, 2 pork chops, and chili 
Ok, now I’m on board.
I’m with StuffLikeThatThere, eat all the leftovers you want. Please. Get them out of there before they start becoming a science project. (Unless you specifically told me you saved the last piece of cheesecake for me. In which case, eating of the last piece of cheesecake would put you in the doghouse.) However, if you touch the ingredients without replacing them you’re in trouble. I can’t make cheesecake if everyone eats up all the graham crackers and uses all the cream cheese. Similarly, if you eat all the tortilla chips there’s no reason for me to make salsa.
I haven’t had a lot of issues with it in my house in the past, but the teenaged boy is starting to be a problem what with his thinking that all the popcorn and chips that come into this house belong to him. grrrrr.
Growing up, my mom drove me nuts about leftovers. SOMETIMES they were supposed to just be eaten whenever by whomever. OTHER times she had a specific plan in mind (second meal, or specific lunch for someone on a particular day, whatever). But she often forgot to tell any of us whether the leftovers were reserved or not. So you’d get into this cycle of mom getting pissed that someone ate X-leftover that was supposed to be for Y-situation… Then she’d get pissed because no one ate the leftovers (because she got mad last time!) so they went bad.
Sheesh. 
When I was a kid, I’d spend all day in school, daydreaming about the chicken fried steak left over from last night’s dinner.
I’d get home to find out MY MOTHER HAD EATEN IT! GAH! She was my MOTHER, she was supposed to read my mind, and KNOW I wanted that!
When my kids were little, my problem was HAVING leftovers to take for lunch the next day. I solved that problem by filling the Tupperware dish from the table, before everyone sat down to eat.
After the kids were older, I had to LABEL that Tupperware dish in the fridge, or I wouldn’t be able to find it when it came time to leave for work the next morning.
“Doggie bags” from dinner OUT are labeled immediately before leaving the restaurant. Hands off unless you have permission from the original owner.
Anything left in the “fritch” long enough to develop a heartbeat gets tossed.
~VOW
MrTao and I don’t have too much of a problem, as we typically like different things anyway. But he’ll sometimes ask if he can ‘grab one of your sodas, hon’, even if he’s the one that bought them, and ditto for the keurig-cup coffees; I buy ground coffee and use the awesome ‘fill it yourself’ option, but there are times I just don’t feel like doing even THAT much work.
We seem to have done pretty good on the throwing out of things, too. I know I’ve thrown out stuff WAAAAY beyond the date <and stinking!!> that I let rot because, well, I didn’t get it and I assumed he was going to eat it; meanwhile he’s expecting me to help eat it and so it goes to waste. /facepalm And I know he’s done the same with my forgotten cottage cheese or whatever.
I used to live in a house with 4 other guys, one of whom would eat anything in the fridge (I don’t have a German mom.) Anything - a stick of butter, half a jar of mayo - he would eat it or use it for some God-awful purpose I didn’t want to know. It was just something we had to learn to live with. A note asking him to not eat something would have been so cute he would have probably pinned it to my door with the empty container.
One rule I could count on with him though: you don’t take a man’s last beer.
They always do it for leftovers at my house, but not for ingredients. I’m not going to just eat ingredients, but I am going to use them in other stuff. I can’t read your mind about what you plan to do with stuff. And all my money goes to the “rent”, so I can’t buy more myself.
If you don’t know what you should and should be eating out of the fridge, that’s a very telling thing about who you are. Obviously, you don’t pay attention to squat around you and need a brick shithouse to fall on your head.
You don’t need to read minds, per se, but for fuck sake, you are required to “Get it”.
I live with my mother to look after her since my dad died; I’m on a tight income, she’s doing quite awright. She goes out to church about 4-6 times a week, and will ‘go grocerry shopping’ for herself after church. She brings home a fuckton of food after every expedition. There is a cannister of Pringles next to her chair, her bed, her desk; there is about five pounds of ground chuck on her side of the fridge. The freezer is packed with her Callender’s pot pies, vegetable packs, ice cream.
So the food she eats? Mine. I go to the supermarket once a week with an idea in my head of what I need and what I have, and it’s always a joy to discover what I thought was a full jar of mayonnaise is now just wispy patches on the bottom, or that she’s eaten my name-brand sweet pickles, or helped herself to half a loaf of bread that was supposed to last me a week, etc. When she does make a half-assed attempted to replace what she’s taken, it’s always the crappiest generic version she can find. :mad: Or despite knowing her for 46 years now, she still thinks I like onions, garlic, pork, etc.
Ancillary rant:
I have one shelf in the fridge, and two shelves in one of the pantry cabinets. She has enough food squirreled away for the upcoming zombie attack. And yet she complains that my two cans of tuna ‘take up too much room’ or she’ll throw out my food thinking ‘it was no good.’
The omninous threats I used on roommates in grad school (a note reading ‘I licked this’ and other gross stuff) do not work when it’s mom.
We’ve narrowed it down to a few simple rules at our house:
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If we go out to dinner and someone brings home leftovers, nobody else is allowed to eat those particular leftovers unless they are declared publicly-available.
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If you drink the last of the iced tea, make another pitcher.
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If you eat/drink the last of something, put it on the grocery list.
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I never take the last chocolate, and she never takes the last beer.
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My leftover haggis is safe. Nobody else in the household will take it. Although it’s a good thing I don’t live with my buddy, Doug. He and I made a haggis and bratwurst pizza one evening. Now, when he’s at my house, I must keep an eye on the haggis.
We still have the occasional “I was looking forward to eating that ALL DAY! How could you eat that?”
If it’s all decorated on a pretty plate, and you know I’m going to a brunch/shower/potluck/church function today, its not for you.
I would mark stuff, but I expect the Dad in thehouse to understand these things already. Like the dense fiber nut breads are for the adults, don’t eat all the almost white bread that I use in kid lunches. The mini gatorades are again for lunches, they are not to be swilled down one aftr the other while at home. Cereal? Raisin Bran for you Buddy, hands off teh Capn Crunch…
Likewise with the choco chips, leave them alone, I plan on making cookies, then you can have some!
We’re having an issue with a family friend+kid that recently moved in with us.
If I go to the store, I end up buying community goods, stuff for us and stuff for her. It’s just easier to do it this way. However, after the fact, she has not offered to pay either a percentage of the grocery bill (easiest solution) or instead reimburse me for part of the common items or even her personal stuff. Everything in the refrigerator is apparently for all and to be honest I’m OK with that (just help pay for it!!!)
BUT, when she goes to the store, she only buys groceries for her and her kid and makes a big deal that those are HER things so we get a situation like her kid drank all of my whole milk (I’m the only one that uses it in my family) and then the friend buys more for her kid to use but of course since she paid for it, it’s for her kid’s use. Or she ate all of Mrs. Cad’s b&b pickles and then didn’t bother to pick up more at the store so guess who had their sandwich sans pickles.
Since this is about refrigerator item ownership, I won’t discuss the (lack of) paying rent or helping with utilities and how she assumed I’m a live-in au pair during the day since I’m a teacher.
If the Dad doesn’t like the bread or cereal that you buy for adults, then take that into account. Really. And buy the jugs of Gatorade for Dad to drink. Clearly, he enjoys “kid” food. If he makes a contribution to the grocery budget, then take his tastes into account when shopping. It’s OK for adults to prefer certain foods, even if those foods aren’t the healthiest choices. Although I’m not sure that ANYONE should be eating Capn Crunch.
There has to be an ‘it’ to get, a real one.