Shelf Life

Shelf Life is a simple application that helps manage your stock of perishable food. I conceived of Shelf Life after many-a-trip to the store in which I loaded up on tons of healthy stuff like spinach and grapefruit; only to forget about them as soon as I packed them away in my fridge at home. Let’s be fair though: it’s hard to remember spinach when there are chicken wings and beer waiting for you at O’Briens.

Like I said, the idea is simple. When you buy something you enter the name of the item into Shelf Life. It logs the time you bought the item and computes how long the item should last using an online database. The item will then appear in your inventory with a green icon next to it. As your item ages so will its icon in Shelf Life by gradually changing from an initial green color, to a yellow color, and then ultimately a red color. Once your item is labeled red it has expired and should be discarded. Eventually you may see a biohazard symbol appear. If this happens it might be time to bust out the hazmat suit.

One thing that struck me while making this app was that entering all of these items was going to be a huge pain. To address this, I’ve made this part as easy as I can. All you need to do is type the first few characters of an item’s name and Shelf Life will recommend up to 10 possible matches for what you have typed, sorted by popularity.

The cool part is what happens when you enter an item Shelf Life has never seen before. You will be able to manually enter how long your item lasts along with a quantity. Once you do this the app submits your input to the backend database for the next user to see. In this manner the database is always growing and the shelf life data provided is always becoming more accurate.

For more information check out Shelf Life on the AppStore where you can purchase it for $1.99.

I love hearing from users so please contact me with your suggestions or feedback.

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