Newspaper and Milk

Before even my first class here @ ISB, lessons in inventory management have begun. I have a new found respect for the guys in pizza hut and McDonalds and all the hotels and restaurants in the world. It all started one fine morning at 8 AM when two guys woke me up from cozy slumber and made an offer to serve milk and newspaper at my doorstep every day thereafter. Ah !! Opportunity. I jumped upon it and within nanoseconds I had committed myself to 2 newspapers and 2 packets of milk being dropped at my doorstep every morning before 8 AM.
Now let me talk about the easier bit first. The newspaper. I have a voracious appetite (but not the digestion) for information. So I have information puring in from all kinds of sources inside my Google Reader, my Inbox, my facebook updates etc etc. And I feel pressured when new information starts piling up unattended. It pains my heart when I have to "mark all as unread" for any category in the reader, coz I feel I definitely missed out the most important item of the whole day right there. And the newspaper just added to my daily (over)dose of this information. Now I have a new task, a new compulsion to read at least every single headline of the Hindu and the Business Standard. Unfortunately these are the two newspapers with the minimum of ads and the maximum of nice articles and opinions (as per my very limited knowledge). So there is a lot on my plate. And I am at my wits end these days trying to meet my info-digestion targets for the day. So there are quite a few days when the newspaper just goes unread into the cl oset in my kitchen (for lack of dumping-zone options here in my ISB room). Its been a little over a week now and that closet is looking fuller than it should've been. There are no known kabari-wallahs in the Student Village (read: hostel) and I wonder what I am gonna do a month from now when the closet goes full. So two questions here:
1. What is the optimal number of days after which I should dispose of my old newspapers?
2. How can I optimize the time I spend on information gathering everyday?

Now to the second, and tougher management problem - THE MILK. Well back home, within a family of 3, the consumption was roughly around 1.5 l a day. And this included the diet of someone whose only staple food is milk - Sipul the great. Though she's not that big a foodie, but I'm sure my consumption of milk back home was no where near 0.5 l, let alone 1 l. Now what prompted me to cut a deal for 1 l of milk daily, either I know or GOD does. (A) I already had a litre of milk in my fridge the day I placed the order (B) I rarely drink milk as-is. My only consumption of milk is as a ingredient for tea which even if I drink thrice a day, cannot be more than 0.25 l. (C) I know of no other uses of milk than drinking it :-)
So next day onwards the mayhem began. And soon my fridge was flooded with milk of which I had no use. I tried drinking it but at the age of 30 drinking milk just does not seem right. So I consulted the home ministry - my spouse - and she gave me the suggestion of telling the guy to halve the supply. Very good suggestion I thought. But the catch was I would have to get up by around 7 AM to catch hold of the delivery guy. In fact, to be on the safer side I got up at 6:30 AM the next day. But first time around success is rarely guaranteed. It was only 2-3 days later that I was able to get hold of this guy. By that time I already had run up an inventory of 2 litres of milk !! This time I decided to do some thinking - I decided I would make things with the milk. Options were - (A) yogurt (B) shakes (C) lussi. And all these options became very practicable when I went out to the city one day and got myself a blender and few mangoes. So that day I made myelf and Vibz a dash of MANGO SHAKE. It turned out well. I also called up home ministry again to understand how yogurt could be made. I did that too and succeeded. A day later I even tried out lussi and even that was a success !! So here I was - turning a challenge into an opportunity. The problem of surfeit had turned into an opportunity to learn. But it has made me wonder - this was just an extra litre of milk. How do companies manage tonnes and tonnes of raw materials ? New found respect as I said. In the courses I do in my MBA I'd try and find answers to this question.