In my head, the fridge is for perishables and the pantry is for things which last forever. When I think about what I need to use up soon, I think about the fridge, and only the fridge.1 This poses a conundrum when it comes to root vegetables which don't need to be refrigerated but will start doing funky things like sprouting if I leave them alone too long.
The correct solution is to keep better track of the pantry.
My solution is very simple. I put them in the fridge, and thus I can keep track of everything in one place.
This is not recommended. I don't really recommend it either.
Supposedly they go bad faster, and the flavor/texture is worse.2 But, I'm putting them in the fridge so I use them faster and I'm happy with how my food is turning out, so I don't see a problem with it.
I'd rather have suboptimal onions than forget about an onion in the pantry for a month again.
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Nightly Notes
I could stand to be more fussy about food safety and hygiene.
I would not advocate for the food safety mindset I have in any other area generally, but for something as low stakes as my personal home cooking where the failure modes are typically visibly (or olfactorily) obvious and there's a years long record to fallback on, I'm comfortable where I'm at. I'm sure anyone who works in public health could point out several ways this is a flawed mindset to have.
I'm willing to live with that for now.
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Technically I keep an eye on any baked goods too, but those are snack/breakfast foods which don't require cooking as part of a dish. They'll get eaten without any focused effort. ↩
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There are health concerns about refrigerating potatoes specifically, but that's apparently out of date. Check your regional food safety group, don't take your health advice from a blog post. ↩