02271 Designing your kitchen record-keeping system
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. — Mark Twain
Most people will find these records useful for planning and developing their personal food systems.
- What food did you buy from what source and how much did it cost?
- If you produced food — how much food did you produce or process, and when?
- Food storage (when you acquired the item)
- Menus and shopping lists
Since record-keeping is a task that involves time, most of us avoid it. Our records, however, can tell us over time what happens with our household food economy. This helps you to make budgets and to understand how you can decrease your outgoing money paid for food. Maybe you could do some food processing or increase your home food production. If you keep records for as long as a year, of all your grocery purchases, and arrange them by your local/regional food shed and the international food system, you will have valuable data that you can use to discern ways to reduce your dependence upon the international food system, increase your participation in local food systems, and grow your domestic production.
Observe.
What records do you need to keep? Make a list of the information items you need for each list you feel you need. Make a list of any material items needed. File folders? Notebook? Computer database? Etc.
At minimum, I think records of food acquisition and production, menus, and food storage are the basics.
Do you want to record time? Involvement of other members of the household? Decide at the beginning what you need and want to track in your record-keeping system.
What are your usual habits and procedures when you source food? Are there “contemporary records” produced when you shop for food (e.g., receipts)? Where do you keep the receipts and are they accessible? Stop throwing away receipts and enter their info into a spreadsheet.
What other sources provide information you need to “remember?”
What existing records, if any, do you keep about your kitchen work?
Study and Evaluate.
What platform will you use for your records? Spreadsheet, word processing, 3-ring binder, notebook?
What equipment do you need? (Box for receipts, computer, pencils, file folders, scale to weigh garden produce, etc.)
How will keeping these records fit into your present kitchen routine?
Do you have the right equipment?
Who will do this work? Do you (or he or she) have the necessary skills?
Do others need to learn these skills?
Do you have enough space? Need more?
What kind of back-up do you need in case of catastrophic loss?
Do you need a records-keeping station in or near your kitchen?
How can you make this easy? Any additional functions that can be stacked on this activity? Any beneficial connections with other activities in the kitchen and elsewhere in your life?
Design.
Make your design recommendations based on your observation and evaluation. For practice, use at least three of the methods identified in 00381 to do this small design.
Stage your decisions.
What comes first? Middle? Last? Never mind the fact that this is a small design, put first things first and second things second and third things third, so you get a feeling of what it is like to organize a set of tasks such as this.
Budget.
If any of this will cost money, get some estimates and develop a budget. Decide on a source of funds.
Write the report.
Write the report and add it to your lifestyle design.