There’s a dry erase board on the wall next to my freezer, and I take a picture of it. Once the AI can read that board, it plans our dinners around the chicken thighs I already have instead of putting them back on the grocery list. It reads my handwriting and my tally marks, and asks me when it can’t tell what something says.
The short version
- AI was good at meal plans, but it didn’t know what was already in my house, so the grocery list kept re-buying things.
- Fastest fix: photograph the inside of your freezer and ask what you could make this week. Five minutes.
- The version I use: a written list on a board by the freezer, photographed whenever it changes. Use talk to text to have your AI write the list for you.
- Tell it to ask about anything it can’t read instead of guessing. That’s why I trust it.
- Just want the instruction? Jump to it.
What you need: an assistant you can send a photo to. The free versions of Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all take photos. I use Claude.
The problem wasn’t the meal plan
I’d been using AI to plan our dinners for a while, and it was good at it. A week of meals and a grocery list in a couple of minutes.
But the grocery list had everything on it. Including things sitting in my freezer.
It wasn’t wrong, exactly… it had no way to know. So it assumed I was starting from an empty kitchen. Buying in bulk is only cheaper if you actually use the thing, and the freezer is where good intentions go to get buried.
So the real question wasn’t “how do I get better meal plans.” It was: how does it find out what’s already in my house?
What I do now
I keep a written list on a dry erase board on the wall next to the freezer. When something goes in, it goes on the board. When something comes out, it gets crossed off.
Whenever I want a current list, I photograph the board and send the picture with one instruction. My AI reads the handwriting, sorts everything into categories, and asks about whatever it couldn’t make out. Then it plans the week around what’s there.
How do I start today? (five minutes)
Open the freezer and take a few pictures. Send them to your AI and ask what you could make this week. Nothing to write, nothing to set up.
- Photograph the freezer. Shelf by shelf, or a couple of angles into the bins. Pull the top layer aside if you want your AI to see underneath.
- Send the pictures and ask what it sees, and what you could make with that this week.
- Tell it to say what it can’t read instead of guessing.
That works if you can actually see everything. Mine is packed, and half of it is buried under the other half, so a picture of my freezer is a picture of the top layer. If yours is the same, the board is the next step.
How do I make a freezer inventory list? (about thirty minutes, once)
Have your AI write the list, copy it onto a board you hang by the freezer, then photograph the board whenever it changes. The first step is the one people skip, and skipping it is why most freezer inventories never get written down at all.
1. Have your AI make the list. Open the freezer and use talk to text to tell your AI what’s in there. Have it make the list for you, grouped by category, with amounts. You don’t have to sort anything first.
2. Copy the list onto a board by hand. This is the only tedious part, and it’s once. A dry erase board is what I use… a piece of paper taped up next to the freezer does the same job.
3. Have your AI check your work. Photograph the board and ask your AI to compare it against the list you dictated. Mine caught one thing I’d forgotten to write down. It flags. I decide.
4. Keep the board current at the freezer. Cross something off when you take it out. Add something when it goes in. Hang it at eye level, close enough to reach without walking away. That’s the only reason this is still alive in my house… I’m standing right in front of it.
5. Photograph the board whenever it changes and send the picture with this instruction.
Copy this into your AI
Here’s my freezer board. Turn it into a list grouped by category. Tell me anything you couldn’t read instead of guessing, and flag what looks precooked versus raw.
Move if there’s a window behind you, so the glare isn’t sitting on the marker. No need to tidy the board first… mine never is, and it reads fine.
What should I write on the board?
Five rules, and they decide whether the list is worth anything.
Write the form of the food. “Sausage” is not enough. Ground or links changes what you can cook Tuesday. Leave it off and the AI fills in the blank… mine filled it in wrong, then kept telling me to put my ground sausage on the grill.
Say what’s already cooked. The falafel, the chicken strips, the smoked turkey, the meatballs. Those don’t take any work, and that’s what I need to know at dinnertime on a Wednesday.
Tally marks, grouped in fives. It counted the turkey stock off my board without me explaining anything. (After Thanksgiving the carcass goes in a big pot with all the peelings, and that turns into stock for later.)
One abbreviation per item. “Ssg.” at the top and “Saus.” at the bottom reads as two different foods.
The month you put it in. So things get used first in, first out, before they end up with freezer burn at the bottom.
Confession: I often forget the month. I write it on the bags, but it doesn’t always make it to my board. Do as I say, not as I do. lol
What changed once it knew
The grocery list got shorter. It stopped putting chicken thighs on there when I had three bags of them, and started building the week around what needed to get used.
It also tells me to move something from the freezer to the fridge in the morning so it’s thawed by dinner. That runs off my calendar, which I’ll write about separately.
For scale, ReFED puts wasted food near $762 per person a year, and the USDA puts it at 30 to 40 percent of the food supply. A board doesn’t fix that. It does mean I dig fewer unidentifiable frozen bricks out of the bottom.
How do I get it right over time?
Once the board works, stop handing the list over every time.
- Ask your AI to remember the freezer list. Most assistants can remember things between conversations or keep a saved note; how that works, and whether it’s free, is different on each one, so check yours before you count on it.
- Tell it to use that list every time you ask for a meal plan or a grocery list, and to ask you for a fresh picture when the list is getting old.
- Check the first couple of plans against your board yourself. AI will tell you it used something when it didn’t, and that’s much easier to catch in week one than in week six.
Mine does this. What I still haven’t done is put it on a weekly schedule, so it happens when I get around to it instead of on its own.
Where it still needs me
It misreads handwriting, it can’t see what’s underneath something, and every so often it fills in a blank instead of asking.
The one that got me: talk to text turned Colby Jack into “Kobe Jack,” and it put “Gouda Jack” on a shopping list without flagging it. Gouda Jack is not a product.
So tell it to ask instead of guess, and read what comes back before you shop. A tool that asks is worth more than a tool that guesses.
It’s working… mostly. The board goes stale when nobody crosses anything off, and I don’t photograph it as often as I should.
But nobody’s buying a fourth bag of chicken thighs.
About the author: Heather Pocorobba has spent 15 years in communications, simplifying complex topics and answering the question “what does this mean for me?” She writes AI at Home with Heather, showing how anyone can use AI to get more of the household to-do list done without giving up family time.
Leave a Reply