Waste Less Food, Save More Money

We were just out of town for a week and while we were gone our contractor was replacing our kitchen floor. So, we had to clean out our fridge of EVERYTHING because it was going to be unplugged for a few days. It seems so bare now but I can actually find everything and identify what is in there. I like this cleaned out fridge a lot better than it’s regular state.

I too have recently been thinking about cutting waaaaay back on the stockpiling too and only buying what we need when we need it. It will be an experiment for us also and I am very curious to see what happens to our grocery bill. It is so nice to have a neat, clean fridge that is easy to navigate I am wondering what it would be like to have the same feeling about my somewhat stuffed pantry.

I have to go to the grocery store every week anyway so this shouldn’t be difficult to implement…

We’ve been trying this for the most part since we returned from an extended trip to Europe 2 years ago. They key for us is to space out a trip to Sam’s Club (we have no Costco’s here) say 2x a year to stock up the pantry and to occ. load up the freezer with meats and veggies when on sale at the local gorcery so that there is always a go to for those days when you’re just tuckered and don’t feel like driving to or stopping at the store. When we do waste food it’s still completely our fault, we wanted variety or plans came up, etc., but it’s been a lot less than we did before. Plus it allows us to avail ourselves of whatever the farmer’s market has on tap or is fresh at the store that week. You don’t always get the cheapest deal because what you may be in the mood for on a particular day may not be on sale, but wasting food even if it was purchased cheaply adds up plus you can argue there’s an ethical dimension there too.

I’ve had food stockpiling (more like hoarding) problems for quite a while. I’ve tried a few different things over the last year to bring down the excess. What’s seemed to work the best is to do as you have and shop more often. I set myself a maximum of one bag or more often, just what I need. I called it “shopping like a man” but “shopping like a European” sounds much better.
http://singlemomrichmom.com/the-woman%e2%80%99s-guide-to-shopping-like-a-man/

My costs are definitely down but not by a lot since we weren’t big food wasters. But I do notice we’re eating less junk food (and less banana bread). I consider it to be like drive through only usually for milk, fruit and veggies, not a big mac meal.

JD,

I went through this for a couple of weeks until I realized:

1) It takes both time and discipline to do such a thing. If you have the time to shop every day, great for you. But considering that every hour of my week is so precious, at this point in my life I don’t think I could reasonably sustain such a habit.

2) It ends up costing more in the end. If you purchase only 1 lb of, say, ground beef instead of a 3 lb pack, you are surely paying more on a per unit basis.

Romeo

i have found that the best way to shop is in small amounts. usually from week to week i will buy larger items that are on sale, chicken, pork, beef, items that freeze well. I then plan a weekly menu based on what is in the freezer and just buy the items needed from the supermarket. this saves me a lot of money and time. It’s also important to organize your fridge. this helps to find exactly what you’re looking for and knowing what is in there. a fridge for 2 shouldn’t be overflowing.

I make groceries once a week. I can’t afford to go to Sam’s and drop $100-$200 in one trip. I check the weekly ads before hand, check whats on sale, and make a list. I cook using that food. I’m a grad student, so saving money on food is huge for me. Whenever I think about eating out, I usually make sure there’s no perishables in the fridge first. Even if I want to eat out, sometimes I’ll eat a small meal before hand and only get an appetizer at a restaurant.

I balance stocking up with buying fresh. I stock up on the non-perishables I use a lot (millet, rice, lentils, etc), and tend to make more trips to pick up fresh vegetables, meat and fish.

I live within a short walk of a grocery store, so regular trips to pick up fresh stuff doesn’t cost in transportation — instead, it provides exercise and weight-bearing activity.

One thing to watch is impulse buys! More trips can translate to more unplanned purchases, especially if you go when you’re hungry. I control my budget by going with a list

I like the idea of buying minimal groceries on each trip, as many people who live in cities do. (I think of the New Yorkers I know with tiny little fridges.)

The trouble is that right now I live in a pretty rural area, a 20-30 minute drive from a grocery store. So while I try to limit my trips to once or twice a week, I’ve also learned to grow some food in our garden, and to preserve foods as much as possible too.

3 month old yogurt? That just needs to be thrown away, not eaten just to avoid “wasting” it! Seriously, if you didn’t eat it 3 months ago, you probably don’t “need” to eat it now. Americans have terrible food habits and this obsession with not wasting food is one of them.

On the other hand, it’s great to not waste money on food! The way to do that is to not overbuy.

I’ve been trying to focus on real food as a way to not overbuy. Real food (fresh veggies, fresh meats) is the same per pound whether you purchase large or small amounts. So portion control at the time of purchase is much easier. Another trick to stop myself from buying too much is to tell myself that if we run out it only takes a few minutes to run to the store. I also like to think of the store as my “storage facility”–leave stuff there until you need it, I tell myself–it’s not going anywhere and it will be at peak freshness when I do buy it.

I agree with number 10 that making a meal plan and a list before you go is a great way to not waste food. If everything you are buying already has a use lined up for it you are less likely to forget it. And when you plan in advance you can tell that the leftover lasagna you make on Monday will be great for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday so you don’t need to pick up lunch items.

Another great idea is to have a night every week or two where you make something from what you have on hand. No going to the store, no picking up one last ingredient just be creative and look at what is hiding in the back of your fridge/freezer/pantry. A stir fry or something is great to use up veggies and meat.

Interested to learn how you get on!

Despite being European, we do stockpile. I’ve found that our biggest money-waster is eating any kind of convenience food when we’re feeling lazy, so I buy 5lb bags of potatoes, boil them and portion them up to keep in the freezer for when we just want to dial for pizza. Likewise with onions, bell peppers, prepared-from-dried beans – all those foods that take a bit of prep, are well-priced when bought in bulk and go off easily.

I’ve been doing this for a while, as there are a couple of convenient shops between work and home, and it’s worked out really well for me & the missus. We do keep some amount of dry goods and such on hand and occasionally take a large-ish trip to the store in the car, but 90% or more of our food is picked up on my bike/bus ride home and is consumed in the next 3–5 days. The more we’ve gotten away from packaged foods, the more this style benefits us, since the fresh food we have on hand is actually, well, fresh.

Stockpiling only works for non-perishables: cans, white rice, etc. You can’t do that with fresh meat, produce, eggs, etc. Even grains will go stale eventually– with the exception probably of white rice which lasts something like 5 years in storage (if it develops bugs, you’re in luck– free protein!).

We shop weekly (except for veggies twice a week), and cook weekly, for pre-planned menus, which are quite simple. So on Friday I know I’ll need X portions of greens, Y portions of fruit, Z portions of meat, etc. I cook on our lazy days– generally Sundays, while watching movies or football games or reading or whatever. I’ve measured our consumption of how many pouds of meat we eat per week so it gets pretty accurate, we never run out or have too much left at the end. I tend to avoid “composite” meals that require multiple ingredients. In other words, each ingredient/food group gets cooked independenly. I’ll make beans for the week, or beef roasts that get sliced as the week progresses, same with yams– and we steam greens every night. This avoids the problem of ingredient leftovers, etc. I season when reheating so the taste varies.

Some things I buy on sale for the freezer. Overripe organic bananas make a great base for post-workout smoothies (learned this working in a health food store). Frozen fish fillets– stay frozen. Same with frozen fruits & veggies– no problem stockpiling frozen blueberries– they get eaten fast. I stockpile on grains like brown rice, but only, say, for a month or two ahead (brown rice goes stale in 6 months). I also buy Very Large Cans of olive oil because it’s cheaper that way and we eat it daily, with everything– it’s our main source of fat. Also whey protein (post-workout shake) lasts a long time, so if I see a good deal I’ll buy extra.

I’m ambivalent about freezing meat: it loses a lot of moisture while defrosting, and I can get cheap lean fresh meat at Costco or at my local farm store (for grass-fed). However, if I ever buy a steer or fraction thereof, I’ll buy a freezer. I’ve been calling ranchers and local custom butchers, and between purchasing the animal, transportation, slaughter, butchering and hanging storage, it can get to be a hefty investment (plus the cost of a freezer and the electricity to run it). So I’ll have to save up for that one.

We never have leftovers. Well, occasionally a bunch of kale will go nasty before we cook it, but it’s maybe once a month that it will evade our radar. I throw away fruit peels and the stem ends of collard greens and things like that, but I live in a small apartment and don’t have the space (or nose) for a compost pile.

My natural instinct is to shop and cook daily, but the expense can go out of control really fast that way– impulse buying, experiments, “must have goat butter”, etc. I’ve had to curb my epicurean tendencies for budgetary reasons (which makes my wife happy– she used to get mini-strokes from our Whole Foods bills), but we eat pretty tasty in spite of the new constraints. On top of that, this helps us get good nutrition while working out & losing weight. Discipline is good!

@ Linda in Chicago: chili for breakfast is AWESOME! top it with a couple of fried eggs, and wow! It’s like huevos rancheros. I love spicy food for breakfast.

“Just-in-time” shopping has several advantages for me. 1. the food is fresher 2. the cash flow is easier to manage (i.e. in my spending plan, it’s easier to budget $70/wk for food vs $280/mo. don’t ask me why, it’s a mind game) 3. the schlepping is easier (two bags vs a dozen), which leads directly to 4. I can get by with my re-useable bags.

I find I am *less* likely to impulse buy when doing my just-in-time shopping than I was when I shopped twice a month. Partly because just in time means, usually, I’m on my way home from work and not in the mood to linger in the store.

But if I do buy on impulse, it is nearly always because there is something in the produce section that is irresistably tempting as a side to what I’ve planned to cook in the next couple of days.

DH and I get almost all our beef, fish & chicken from the farmers’ market now, so we routinly have good proteins in the freezer. We don’t keep it long enough for it to lose moisture.

A protein, a vegetable dish, and a glass of wine works for us most of the time. I would wager that the simpler your cooking habits, the better “just in time” shopping will work. If you like to bake, or cook complicated things, you tend to need a fully-stocked pantry, which we easily get by without.

The catch to doing lots of small trips is you may want to have one “splurge” each time, like we do. A bottle of wine for dinner, a carton of ice cream for dessert…that’s what adds up for us.

What helps us is making out a meal plan and STICKING to it. We usually buy our meat in bulk when its on sale (since its hard to find a good deal on local/organic) and freeze it. Then we make short trips to buy the fresh items- like greens or mushrooms – that we don’t want shuffled to the back of the fridge and forgotten.

I’m a big impulse shopper in the grocery store so I don’t think that would work for me. There are two big things that have cut down on our grocery bill.

The first is meal planning but the second is shopping for groceries online. Two stores here have that option. I can go on their website, order exactly what I want and be able to review my order, make changes, see exactly what it’s going to cost before I buy it and then have my husband pick it up with out ever going into the store. We never buy unplanned junk food, I can organize their inventory by unit price and decide rationally from home what we need.
It does cost me a $5 convenience fee, but there are often coupons that wave the fee or online only specials and even without that I save $20+ off our bill each week.

I also try to use perishables first, and rely on frozen veggies, dried beans, etc. at the end of the week. That way if my in-laws invite us over to dinner or we have an emergency I don’t have rotting food in the fridge.

We have a large family and it seems to work better to grocery shop when we need things rather than stockpile.
I have a printed out shopping list with all the things we usually get and when something nears running out it gets ticked on the list. Next time someone is going near the grocery store, just those things are bought.
If there is something on special that we use then we might buy more than what we need – but storage space is an issue.

I hate wasting food. As chief sanitation officer in our household it pains me to have to throw money away when cleaning out the refrigerator. We try and freeze meat after we shop, and only leave 2-3 days out for the next couple of meals.

Rule 1: When making out the weekly menu (a critical step), check the pantry and refrigerator contents first.

Rule 2: Obey Rule 1.

The information about expiration dates is correct. I work for a company that makes soy sauce and other traditional Asian food products. Historically these products were developed to be pretty spoil-proof, especially soy sauce, because of the salt content. We don’t add any preservatives to our products–the salt content and sterilizing the packaging is enough to make them last for years. However, our ‘best before’ dates are all from 1 to 2 years, depending on ingredients. These were decided after testing that showed when the quality would start to change–flavors weaken and a ‘skin’ would form on top of opened bottles. The products are still perfectly safe at that point, and long after.

However, consumers get suspicious when the dates are too long, and I’ve had customers tell me they’ll throw unopened packages out when it’s still 2 or 3 months before the best before date, because they think it’s safer. I understand that food safety is frequently in the news, and it’s definitely something to be concerned about, but people really need to be better educated about how to judge food safety for themselves. At my company we are not supposed to tell people that they can eat our products past the expiration date because we have no way of knowing whether the food was stored safely or contaminated or not. (For example, some people like to transfer their soy sauce to glass serving containers. Our packages are sterile, but we have no way of knowing how clean people’s serving containers may be.) When asked, I usually tell people to smell it or take a small taste, and if it seems fine then it probably is.

After I married an Englishman and moved to his home in England, I had to adjust to several things like hanging clothes outside to dry and a tiny refrigerator.

As result of these lifestyle changes, I never lose socks (with no dryer to eat them) and food never has a chance to be overlooked and go bad in our slightly larger than a college dorm room size frig.

My parents do this, since us kids moved out of the house. They keep two gallon jugs of milk in the fridge at a time and a gallon of orange juice, as well as other similar “staples” like that. My mom tends to make one big trip to the grocery store every once in awhile and then goes to the neighborhood grocery store to pick up meat for dinner and then usually buys more milk or staples as needed on those quick trips.

I tend to just keep milk, orange juice, eggs, yogurt, and some fruit in the fridge, but what I find is that since I don’t have a car and the closest grocery store is a good 20 minute walk away, I’m far too lazy to go there frequently and I end up just never really having much food in the house.

I’m trying to do better at wasting less food as well – but I’m shopping the “European way” by necessity, not choice! I live in Amsterdam and have a small under-the-counter refrigerator and a bike. Meaning every shopping trip is naturally limited by how much fits in the fridge and how much I can carry in my backback or on the handlebars of the bike. I usually shop every other day (mostly just for perishables like bread, veggies & dairy products), and the great advantage is that the limited storage space forces you to use up what you have before you buy more. I can’t say if it saves money – I’m spending an average of 50 euro ($70)/week to feed 2 people – but I definitely throw away less food than when I lived in America due to it being lost or forgotten!

Another interesting thing to note… if your fridge is more bare, I’ve heard that it will cost more to keep it at the desired temperature.

A way to avoid this is to fill up your fridge or freezer with old milk jugs filled with water. They occupy the volume (less open air to chill in the first place) and once the door is closed, they are already cold/frozen and help cool off the air around them. (It’s similar to extra ice packs in a cooler)