A few years ago, I would go through my refrigerator every week and throw out food that had gone bad. Produce, meat, dairy, you name it. I had bought something and then it spoiled before I had a chance to eat it!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to throw away a box of salad greens or some chicken before I could eat it. Things came up… a busy day at work led into a night of getting takeout. Or I made a meal that only used a small amount of an ingredient I bought a lot of.
What I was missing was a PLAN!
So, that leads us into the first important thing you have to do in order to stop wasting food.
1. Shop from a meal plan.
You can’t know what to buy and how much to buy if you don’t have a plan. Find what works for you and do it. I like to meal plan and grocery shop for 10 days at a time.
You can check out a ton of my family meal plans here!
2. Eat your most perishable items first.
Sometimes I don’t follow my meal plans exactly day by day. If it’s Tuesday and I feel like having the meal planned for Wednesday instead, I’ll do it. However, I ALWAYS check my freeze or use by dates on meat and make the meals that require them first.
If I’m making a chicken entree and a beef entree, and the chicken expires on the 2nd and the beef expires on the 5th. The chicken is made first. That way, I don’t run the risk of not using it up before it goes bad!
3. Freeze excess meat.
If life has just happened, and we’ve eaten cereal and sandwiches for the past 3 nights in a row, I just quickly throw meat that we’re not going to have time to eat into the freezer.
If it’s about to go bad, you extend the life of use of the meat by about 3-4 months! This way, I can plan the next 10 days using that meat instead of buying more.
If you have a little bit of time, and really want to bump up the convenience factor later, you can pre-cook your meat and then freeze it for about 3 months. You can read all about how I do that here!
4. Meal plan in order.
When you meal plan, and you shop from that meal plan it’s important to think of meals from most perishable to least perishable. The beginning of your plan should be the ingredients that stay the freshest for the shortest amount of time.
For example, if we’re going to have fresh salmon that week, it’s going to be the first or second day after I grocery shop. While, the last day is going to be made with ingredients that are more shelf stable. We always have breakfast for dinner the last day of our 10 day cycles because those ingredients aren’t at risk for going bad!
5. Only buy what you’ll actually eat.
By this, I mean only buy stuff you know you like and will eat. If you don’t really like cantaloupe, but you want to buy it because it’s good for you. Don’t buy it. Pick a different fruit that you actually like and will actually eat. This way, you’re not throwing out an overripe cantaloupe that has never even been cut open in a couple of weeks.
I’m all for making healthy eating choices and including as many fruits and vegetables as possible, but you have to be realistic otherwise you’re just throwing your money into the garbage!
Basically, in order to stop wasting money on groceries, you have to have a plan and stick to it.
If you continuously go grocery shopping and then proceed to eat out the rest of the week, you’re throwing everything you’re spending away.
Try out these tips for one week. See how much money you save! I bet it will keep you motivated to keep going.
[…] will feed us all for the next 10 days with very little waste! (Read all about how to do that here! Seriously, you can’t start saving money until you stop wasting […]