3. Create an eat-first basket for the strays
Every cupboard generates orphans: the third of a packet of rice, the last four breadsticks, the sauce jar with two spoonfuls gone, the half bag of ground almonds from a cake. Left alone they migrate to the back and die there.
Give them one shallow open basket at eye level, labelled clearly. Every opened, part-used or approaching-date item goes in it, and the household rule is that anyone cooking checks this basket before opening anything new.
Shallow is the operative word. A deep basket becomes a second cupboard with its own hidden layer. A tray or basket no more than 4 inches deep forces everything to lie in one visible layer, and its finite size does the deciding for you: when it is full, you cook from it before buying more.
Pair it with a weekly glance, ideally the evening before you do the main shop. Anything in the basket that could plausibly be dinner becomes a meal plan, and this one habit is where most of the money in this whole exercise gets saved.
Use the same principle for the freezer and fridge, so the three eat-first zones together cover everything at risk in the house. Once they are running, the question “what shall we eat tonight” has a default answer that costs nothing.
Label the basket with a plain card rather than something permanent, because the name matters less than everyone in the house knowing what it is for. Tell them out loud once; a system nobody else knows about is a system that only you maintain.