Work out what your cupboard actually needs to hold.
Stocking lists usually fail on the meals nobody counted — the breakfasts, the snacks, the quick lunch eaten standing up. None of those live in a recipe book. Fill in the grid below, answer five short sections, and leave with a brief an AI assistant can turn into a real shopping list.
Who eats here
Head count isn’t enough — a five-year-old and a teenager pull very different weight. Add everyone who eats in this kitchen, including yourself. If someone is only here part of the time, say so; it changes the total more than anything else on this page.
Allergies, intolerances, a diet, or just a strong dislike that rules a product out of the house.
The rhythm
A pantry has to survive the gap between shops, and in a household that fills and empties in waves it has to survive a whole wave. This is what sets the buffer, not the yearly total.
The big one, not the bread-and-milk run.
The meal grid
This is the part that decides everything else. For each meal, say how many days it gets made at home, then tick who actually eats it. A cell stays amber until you’ve touched it — an untouched cell is the single most common reason a stocking list comes out wrong by half.
What repeats
Breakfast isn’t a recipe, it’s a short list of products on rotation — and in most homes it’s the biggest single block of pantry volume. Describe these the way you’d describe them out loud, with rough odds attached.
What’s on the table, and how often each thing turns up. Say who it’s for if it differs.
Tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, juice, squash. Low volume, but the first thing anyone notices running out.
Only what keeps in a cupboard — skip the fruit and the yoghurt, they’ll be handled elsewhere.
Don’t list dishes — describe the shape. Most people have one pattern they fill differently each time, and knowing the pattern tells us which two or three shelves must never be empty.
The dishes you actually cook
Don’t try to be complete. Twenty dishes made once a year weigh less, together, than one dish made every week — so list the fifteen or twenty that carry your year and stop there. Times per year matters more than the title: “about 20” is usable, “often” is not.
Your cupboard rules
Every kitchen draws the line somewhere different, and the borderline items are where lists go wrong. Say where each of these lives in your home.
This changes the quantities more than the time horizon does. A reserve you cook from every day needs deep stock of a few things; a safety net needs shallow stock of many.
Ground spices, wholemeal flours, nuts and delicate oils won’t stay good for six months whatever the shelf says, so long horizons get trimmed per category.
What this adds up to
One portion is one adult serving. Children count for less, so a family of three rarely means three.
Copy this and hand it to your AI assistant along with a pantry-building prompt. Everything it needs is in here — and anything you left blank is marked, so it knows what it’s guessing at.
Fill in the sections above and your brief will build itself here.