this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
9 points (80.0% liked)
Asklemmy
54355 readers
362 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I feel like most comments here are missing the point. I think you understand the concept of "first in, first out" and are just wondering if the "first" here should be closer to the door hinge or further. You want to establish a standard for your family, like "Always keep the oldest milk to the left and use that up first", but are not sure what logic to use to determine if you should keep the old milk to the left or right .
In short, I say that the oldest milk should be placed further from the hinge.
My logic comes from my experience in the restaurant industry and actually arranging coolers. Optimally, you want to make it so that without thinking, in a rush, the first item a user sees is the oldest one. This is usually the item that is closest to the door/opening/user/whatever. In the case of storing items in the door itself, I would say that the further an item is from the hinge, the closer it is to the user.
Whatever you choose to set as your household standard, the most important part is to make sure all users in the household understand the logic and follow the same pattern. Realistically, it is pretty arbitrary where the "first" milk is kept. Everyone just needs to agree on a single standard.
In response to "just use up your milk before buying a second one"
There are times when you want to always keep a staple ingredient on hand and never run out. If you wait until you have none before you buy more, you may unintentionally end up in a situation in which you are unable to restock that staple in a timely fashion for some reason because some life situation arose. In cases of these staples, you will often end up with two units on hand: one that is partially empty that you are focusing on using up, and a second one that is full and waiting for the first one to get emptied before you start using it. Furthermore, depending on how critical the staple is and how much you expect to use before you have the ability to restock, you may actually want to have three or more units on hand. Maybe you are going to host a large family event and want to stock up so you have enough on hand for everyone. Maybe your grocery store is going to be closed on your normal shopping day next week, so you want to stock up so you do not have to go shopping that week. Maybe the store was having a sale on the smaller size, so you calculated that it was actually a better unit price for you to buy several of those than to buy just one of the larger size. Regardless of why you have more than one on hand, it is smart to set a standard for which one (left, right, etc.) should be the one you always use up first.Yay .. a solid argument!
Thank you.