The average household throws away roughly a third of the food it buys. Not because people are careless — because they forget what's back there. That half-used carton of cream. The container of curry from Tuesday. Out of sight, into the bin.
A grocery app could fix this. But those apps want your receipts, your shopping patterns, and a login tied to your email. You don't need a company watching what you eat to remember there's yogurt going off. You need a simple board you control.
What a 'Leftovers Board' actually is
It's a tiny web page running on your own machine that answers one question: what's in the fridge, and when does it expire?
You add an item, set a date, and it shows up on a list — greenest at the top, reddest near the bottom. Anyone in the house can open it from their phone. Nothing leaves your home network. No account, no cloud, no ads for a meal kit you didn't ask for.
Why self-host this instead of a notes app
A shared notes app works until it doesn't. Someone edits the wrong line. It syncs to a company server. It nags you to upgrade.
A self-hosted board gives you three things a notes app won't:
- Automatic sorting by expiry. The stuff about to spoil floats to the top on its own.
- A screen anyone can glance at. Mount an old tablet on the fridge. No unlocking, no app switching.
- Total privacy. Your eating habits are surprisingly revealing data. Keep them in the kitchen, not in a marketing database.
The 15-minute setup
You don't need to code. Grocy is a free, self-hosted app built exactly for this — it tracks food, expiry dates, and even shopping lists.
- Install Docker on a spare computer or a cheap mini-PC. If you already run a home server, you're halfway done.
- Pull the Grocy container. One command from their docs does it.
- Open the web page on your home network. Add a few fridge items with expiry dates.
- Bookmark it on every phone in the house.
Want the fridge-screen effect? Prop up an old tablet, open the page in full-screen browser mode, and leave it plugged in.
A lighter option
Not ready for Grocy? Self-host a single-page tool like NocoDB or a simple Baserow table. Make three columns: item, date added, expiry. Sort by expiry. Done. It's a spreadsheet that lives in your house and belongs only to you.
The habit that makes it work
The tech is the easy part. The rule is this: when you put food in the fridge, add it to the board. Ten seconds. That's the whole discipline.
Your one action today: grab any old device, open a shared list, and log the three oldest things in your fridge right now. You'll be surprised what you find hiding in the back.