Pantry Burn

What it is

Pantry Burn is a mobile app for tracking what is about to expire in your kitchen. You log the item name and date, and the home screen immediately reorganizes itself around urgency so you know what to use first.

The core insight is that most people do not need another recipe engine. They need a clear answer to a smaller question: what in my fridge is becoming a problem next?

Why I built it

I built it because the usual grocery flow breaks after the shopping trip. Food gets bought with good intentions, then disappears into the fridge until it is too late. Most grocery and recipe apps optimize planning. I wanted something that optimizes recall.

How it works

You add an item with a small set of fields: name, category, expiry date, and optional quantity. Dates are stored as date-only strings to avoid timezone drift, then recalculated locally into urgency buckets every time the app loads.

The home screen sorts everything by urgency and splits the list into “Use first” and “All good.” Search and filters sit on top of that ranking instead of replacing it. Local notifications are scheduled with Expo Notifications using the reminder preferences saved in settings, and rescheduled whenever those settings change.

Everything lives on device with AsyncStorage. There is no account system, no inventory sync problem, and no backend to keep alive for a problem that is fundamentally personal and local.

Key features

• Quick add flow with date picker and lightweight validation
• Urgency engine for expired, today, soon, and fresh states
• Search plus “Use first” and “Fresh” filters
• Local expiry reminders with configurable lead time and reminder hour
• Replacement flow for updating an expiring item instead of duplicating it
• All data stored locally with AsyncStorage

Status

The app is complete, the landing page is live, and it is currently waiting for App Store approval.