Roughly a third of household food waste comes down to timing: good food bought with good intentions, put away, and rediscovered too late. Not laziness. Not carelessness. Just memory, doing what memory does.
The pattern is nearly always the same. The shop happens on the weekend, full of optimism. The week happens next, full of everything else. By Thursday the herbs from Saturday are a science project in the crisper drawer, and the honest reaction is a small pang of guilt, a quiet bin lid, and the same thing again next week.
Most attempts to fix this reach for discipline: spreadsheets, labels, meal plans taped to the fridge. They work for about nine days, because they all require you to remember to use the tool, which was the broken part to begin with.
Chiku is a small dog detective who lives on your phone, and his entire job is remembering so you do not have to. You tell him what came home and when to check on it. Once a day, at a sensible hour, he whispers if something is coming up. When a few things land together, he suggests one dinner that uses them. At the end of the week he writes you a warm page about what got eaten and what got away.
No score. No streak. No red numbers. If food does get away, the food takes the blame in chiku’s house, never the person. Guilt has never once made anyone waste less; it just makes the bin lid quieter.
Chiku never tells you whether something is still good to eat, and he never supplies his own guess for how long food lasts. He is a calendar, not a food scientist. Dates on packaging are mostly about quality, and the judgement about your actual food belongs to your eyes and your nose. Chiku just makes sure you look while it still matters.
Chiku is coming soon to the App Store and Google Play. Meet him on the home page, or see how the fridge inventory works.