Hi Jenny, there are many ways to maintain a healthy starter, but generally you do want to keep the balance of ingredients fairly consistent. Feeding without discarding can ultimately lead to a starter that is overloaded with sourdough waste products and the (relatively) smaller amount of water and flour you're feeding it may not provide adequate nourishment. While this isn't likely to kill your starter, it will affect how it performs in your baking. 

The maintenance instructions you received with your starter sound very much like our normal feeding routine, although we recommend feeding equal parts by weight, rather than by volume (cups). When you feed 1/2 cup each of water and flour, you will actually be adding twice as much water as flour (by weight). While there isn't anything inherently wrong with that starter feeding method, it may make it more difficult for you to follow our sourdough recipes. For example, if you're making our Sourdough Cracker recipe, you may find that your dough is very wet and sticky when using your sourdough discard. For this recipe it would probably work fine to add extra flour to make the dough workable, but ultimately you may find it easier to switch to our sourdough feeding routine if you want to work with our sourdough recipes. 

When you want to store your starter in the refrigerator for up to a week, we recommend giving it a feeding, and then letting it sit out at room temperature for 2-4 hours before placing it in the fridge. Your starter discard can also be stored in a separate container in the fridge. I add to my discard over the course of a few weeks, but generally throw it out and start fresh every 3 weeks or so. For our discard recipes you can use the discard starter straight from the refrigerator. 

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