One thing I feel like a lot of us are trying to do with increasing food prices is cut down on waste. Over the years, I’ve found better ways of cutting down on food that gets tossed by getting more organized and putting new systems/habits in place.
Don’t buy in bulk
Let me preface this one by saying that we’ve never been in a living situation that had extra food storage space. We’ve never had a basement, and we’ve never had an extra fridge or a deep freezer. We’ve actually only had a pantry in two of our five homes we’ve lived in since being married. Our current pantry is not that big, and my “overflow” area is just a small bin on the floor of the pantry. There’s really not a lot of room in it, so I try to limit it to frequently used condiments, favorite snacks, and the cereal we eat. I keep one extra of items and that’s it!
Use containers to organize
I’ve found that the more organized my pantry and fridge are, the easier it is for me to keep track of what I have. For me, that means containers to corral things. I am a little self-conscious about my personal organizing because it’s not pretty. But I also feel like we all see so many photos and videos of gorgeous organized homes, and that’s just not how most of us live in our homes! So I’ll be sharing some photos of my home that have not been tidied or cleaned up… it’s just how it looks on a normal day. In my fridge, I have a bin on the top shelf just for butter so I can clearly see if I’m running low on either type. As you can see, I also store guacamole in that bin… no explanation for that. I have a bin on the next shelf of my fridge that’s for all opened meat & cheese products. Any extra (and unopened) meat and cheese go in the bin below that. That way I can mostly avoid several open packages of the same item.
I do the same thing in my pantry. It’s not a huge pantry, so keeping like items together helps keep things organized. I have a bin with snacks (with clips right on the side wall for chip bags) at the kids’ level, I have another with baking items (things like baking soda, bags of chocolate chips, various extracts, packets of yeast, etc), and Andrew has his own bin of all the random Asian ingredients he acquires for different dishes he wants to make. I repurposed some wine boxes to organize oils and vinegars that don’t fit in the spice cabinet as well as one for nuts and seeds. I keep all of our pasta and pasta stuff (sauces, Parmesan cheese) in an old Amazon box. I’d love to have a beautiful pantry with matching bins and baskets, but I also like instant results that don’t cost me a thing! So a lot of my pantry is organized with empty cardboard boxes that I just write on with a Sharpie.
Like I said… not super fancy or meticulously organized, but we know where things are. For the most part.
Have a system for leftovers
I remember Andrew asking me every day “which one of these containers am I supposed to eat?” and it drove me crazy. I eventually started telling him “it’s always the top container furthest to the left!” When he asked me how I knew that, I told him I had a system. The newest leftovers were always on the bottom and furthest to the right on the top shelf. “Seriously?” he asked. “You move the containers around every night?!” I admitted that yes, I kept them organized this way to make it easy for him (and me) to go right in order of oldest to newest.
I also only keep leftovers for 4 days; if it’s not eaten on the 4th day after I made it, it goes in the trash. It makes it easy to not lose food and end up with the dreaded gray or white fuzzy mold containers, and it’s a lot more likely that all the leftovers will get eaten.
Plan to do a big purge
Twice a year (hopefully) I do a big purge of the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry. I incorporate it into my spring and fall cleaning where the whole fridge/freezer gets cleaned inside and out, and I also empty the pantry to clean it. This is when I check all the expiration dates, toss things that haven’t been touched in the last 6 months, and make sure everything is organized again. I feel like purging fairly often (once or twice a year) helps you remember what you have so you’re more likely to actually use it.
Stick to your menu
I can’t emphasize this one enough: if you want to minimize food waste, you have to stick to your menu! If you’re frequently deciding you don’t want what’s on your menu, your meat will spoil, your fresh veggies and fruit will get moldy, and you’ll just end up trashing a lot of food. If I ever have to change things up at the last minute, I try to make sure the menu just gets bumped back a day or I freeze what I can.
I hope some of these tips have been helpful for trimming your grocery bill and tossing less food! Do you have any systems that work well for you?
On An Even Kiel 