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So, confession: I used to be that roommate. The one with the suspicious containers of leftovers in the back of the fridge. Yeah… not cute. There’s something about student life that just makes food management feel like a losing game especially when you’re trying to eat on a budget and have the attention span of a potato.

That all kind of changed when I started messing around with IoT stuff for a course project. I wanted to build something practical. Something that would actually help me in real life, not just look good on a slide deck. And the thing that hit me? Food waste. Specifically, my own inability to remember what was in my fridge or when I bought it.

So I decided to build this basic fridge monitor. It started with a temp and humidity sensor, and I added an ultrasonic sensor later to track when the fridge door opened. Eventually I added RFID stickers on a few containers to get a rough idea of what was going in and out (super janky but kind of worked). It wasn’t about being fancy it was about learning and trying to solve a real problem.

Getting everything set up was chaotic. I had wires everywhere, breadboards on the kitchen counter, and at least one very confused roommate who just wanted to grab a yogurt. I used a cheap ESP32 board and started logging data to a cloud platform that let me build a dashboard and run a bit of logic. It wasn’t pretty at first, but watching live data come in while I opened and closed the fridge was… weirdly satisfying?

The temp alerts were the first thing that actually helped. Turns out, our fridge would randomly warm up during the night and then drop back down by morning something I never would’ve noticed otherwise. I adjusted the settings and probably saved myself from accidentally eating sketchy chicken. Small wins.

Then I started playing with notifications. I set it up so if the door was left open for more than 2 minutes (hello, indecisive midnight snacking), I’d get a ping on my phone. It worked. I mean, I ignored it half the time because, well, cravings but still.

At one point I had this little dashboard showing me average fridge temps, how often it was being opened, and humidity levels (still not sure why I cared about that one but it felt fancy). It was basic, but it was mine. And honestly? It kind of changed the way I interacted with food. I became way more conscious about what I was storing, for how long, and what I was wasting. Even started meal prepping more because I could “see” how my fridge was behaving.

Of course, I messed up a bunch. I fried a board by accident (don’t ask), my Wi-Fi cut out mid-demo during class, and my RFID system was more like “guess and hope.” But I learned more in those weeks of building than I did in half of my theory-heavy lectures.

And here’s the cool part: people got interested. My friends started asking how I made it, if they could build something similar for their own fridges or pantries. One guy wanted to track beer bottles going in and out (honestly genius), and another wanted to monitor her sourdough starter. It sparked conversations about food waste, sustainability, and how tech could help in small but meaningful ways.

Also, not gonna lie, building this project saved me during midterms. While everyone was scrambling to finish written assignments, I already had most of my code and wiring done. The only thing I panicked over? The final report. Writing is not my thing especially not when I’ve been neck-deep in Arduino libraries for a month. I may or may not have Googled write my essay online Canada at 2 a.m. with a coffee in one hand and a half-broken sensor in the other. Didn’t end up using one, but I get the appeal. Sometimes you just need help whether that’s with schoolwork or your dying fridge monitor.

Anyway, I guess the main thing I took from all this wasn’t just the tech side. It was realizing how personal food is. Like, yeah, I learned how to connect sensors and write cloud functions, but I also stopped wasting so much food. I stopped buying junk I wouldn’t eat. I started actually respecting what was in my fridge, and by extension… myself? Is that cheesy? Whatever, it’s true.

So yeah, if you're even slightly into DIY projects, or trying to eat better, or just looking for an excuse to play with electronics that beep build something food-related. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Monitor your spice rack. Track how fast you go through oat milk. Make your rice cooker tweet when it's done. Just start. You’ll learn, you’ll eat better, and maybe you’ll annoy your roommates a little less.