Every couple of weeks, when cleaning out the fridge and freezer, I am throwing away food. What a waste!!!
I never really thought about it until I took a moment and looked at the trash can. It was almost full. It looked like an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. LOL.
That is money being thrown out and it doesn’t have to be if we used everything we bought. It’s weird, you are always told to stock up on stuff so you don’t have to make a dozen trips to the store. So we do that with all the fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, and so forth.
The pantry and freezer look great when you are fully stocked up. Your intent is to eat at home everyday and cook and use all the food you bought.
Days go by and life gets in the way. You know what happens then. As you are out running errands, you eat out for lunch, dinner or who knows, maybe both. This means the food you just bought sits another day with more chance of going bad.
Now when you look in fridge, you see those fresh foods starting to go bad. Before you know it you just wasted money in two ways – you ate out several times and you are also throwing away food.
Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying stop eating out because I know I am not going to do that.
What I am saying is, instead of stocking up on food, go to the store and buy just enough for 3 days. Three days of food really does not have a chance of going bad and that means less waste in the trash can.
For instance, today I went to the store and bought dinner for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The total cost was around $40. This means we’ve basically got six meals for $40. If we went out to eat $40 is just one meal with possibly lunch the next day.
I challenge you all to go buy just for three days and see if your waste goes down and if your bank account increases. Plus, I challenge you to make eating out a special occasion. Don’t eat out just because you do not feel like cooking. Make it a date night with your spouse. This way you are saving money and can really plan for your future.
Do you throw a lot of food away? Are you up for the challenge of cooking more and eating out less often?
Great Idea! I always look at my schedule for the week and loosely plan my meals before taking meat or fish from the freezer. A couple of days ago, I was sick to my stomach when I had to throw out a huge salmon fillet because it sat in the fridge too long! I had work much longer days than expected and was not home to cook dinner as I had planned. When I finally did get it on the stove, the smell told me it was no longer edible. I make a trip to the farmer’s market for meat and seafood every 6 weeks or so and divide it up and put it in the freezer. For fresh produce, I stick to your idea and buy only what I know I am going to eat within the week. Great post!
You must not buy perishable goods in bulk! It’s okay to a lot of they’re like toiletries or something that dominoes expire too quickly.
That’s the sucky part about how we were shopping. We weren’t buying our perishables in bulk. We just didn’t use them like we planned too. It never failed that we would have some pepper or piece of fruit go bad because we didn’t eat it within the week.
We’ve never been able to master the whole shopping for two weeks or a month thing that some people do for their budget. When we were shopping for an entire month of food I would have to freeze stuff – then of course I would forget to thaw it out on the day we were supposed to be eating it and I’d wind up ordering a pizza or just making grilled cheese sandwiches.
We go shopping for about three days worth of stuff at a time now and it works for us. I tried to do enough for a whole week, but then I’m always worried about things going bad. We do buy some things in bulk; snack foods for the kids, bottled drinks, toiletries, peanut butter, dog food, that kind of stuff.