Tips and Advice - Kitchen Equipment

Have you ever looked at a bowl of leftovers in your refrigerator and forgotten how long ago you cooked them? Have you ever looked at a bottle of salad dressing or salsa and wondered when they were opened and how long they stay fresh? Let’s face it; all of us have done it at one time or another.

Enter the DaysAgo Digital Day Counter. These cute little timers will keep track of the dates when you’re too busy to remember them. There is no more guesswork when you use these timers in the refrigerator. You also don’t need to break out the freezer tape and Sharpie pens. Just set the timer on an item, and it does all the work for you.

Uses for the Days Ago Digital Day Counter

The uses in the kitchen are obvious. You can put a day counter on a jar of opened food, a container of leftovers, or wrap one with and elastic band around a crock of sourdough starter. You can also use the day counter to track how long it has been since you watered your plants, wiped down the baby’s crib, or to track any number of household chores you want to do on a regular basis. There is even a special edition pink Days Ago Digital Day Counter to help you track how many days since you last did a breast self-exam.

Keep It or Toss It?

How long is it safe to keep different foods in the refrigerator? The Days Ago Digital Counters website has a handy food freshness guide that tells just how long food is safe after opening. For example, most baby foods should be used within 1 to 2 days after opening or preparing.

Styles of Days Ago Digital Day Counters

These cute little round timers come in a variety of colors such as pink, blue, green , and orange. You can purchase them with suction cups or magnetic bases to stick them to things. They also can be purchased with an elastic band attached that fits easily around jars. Their small size and versatility make them unobtrusive yet useful little tools.

Days Ago Digital Day Counters Receive National Publicity

The two women who invented the timers, Debbie Stephens Stauffer and Kathleen Whitehurst, were recently on the Oprah Show  and the timers were shown on the Today Show. Their invention has also been featured in major national magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, Cooking, and Real Simple.

FUN Rating: 15

These are handy, easy to use, and meet a very important need in the kitchen. But do you have to have them? Not necessarily. You can continue to track the days with tape and a Sharpie pen, but letting this new gadget do it for you is so easy, why wouldn’t you want to use the Days Ago Digital Counter? I'm thinking of new uses for them every day.

Suzanne Pitner loves to cook, knit, and teach. She has won several Editor’s Choice awards as a feature writer at Suite 101 and she maintains the TeacherWriter blog.