This week I am on vacation and since I do not have any food waste to share with you, Angela Barton of My Year Without Spending graciously allowed me to run a reprint of her post “Refigerator Games”. I hope you enjoy her solution for forgotten food as much as I did when I first read this post.
Recently, I wrote this post about how I’d started labeling our leftovers so we wouldn’t forget about them and shove them to the back of the refrigerator, where they’d turn into a science experiment on their way to the trash.
I’ve been inspired by Jonathan Bloom and his Wasted Food blog to do my small part to reduce our food waste. Our latest fun and games has been very successful.
I’ve labelled one section of the refrigerator “Eat Me!” That’s the food that needs to be eaten within the next few days or it will get thrown out. And it’s working! Like a lot of things in life, I think the key to making sure you don’t throw out a lot of food is FOCUS.
Besides labeling leftovers and designating a section of the refrigerator to items that need to be eaten immediately, what’s also helping is buying LESS food in the first place. When we have too much food, we lose track of what we have and it ends up getting thrown out. For example, I like having a well-stocked pantry, but if it’s too full and I forget about the pancake mix, the moths might get to it. And then it’s trash.
Jonathan Bloom’s focus is entirely on food waste, but there are a lot of other bloggers writing about food waste as a part of being frugal and being green. The Non-Consumer Advocate has a Waste-No-Food Challenge and The Frugal Girl writes a weekly post about how much (or little) food she wasted that week.
Wasting less food not only saves money, it’s a small step toward saving the planet. Food waste is a HUGE contributor to greenhouse gases. You can read all about it at Wasted Food.
Please share your fun and games, strategies, and tips for wasting less food in the Comments section. We’d all love to hear them… Who doesn’t want to save money and save the planet at the same time?
Alea says
Rebecca- As homeschoolers, we have an advantage when it comes to leftovers! Our lunches are often composed of leftovers or new creations made to stretch leftovers.
Crystal – That is how I use my eat me shelf. We have wasted food, because everyone thought they were saving it for someone else. We have also run into the problem of someone eating a key ingredient for dinner. so the safe to eat shelf works for us.
CrystalsCozyKitchen says
I LOVE the idea of the eat me shelf. That way my husband wouldn't have to ask me if it was okay if he ate such and such. Or I wouldn't find it missing…
Rebecca says
Love the "eat me" shelf — very Alice in Wonderland-ish.
I keep a pretty clean fridge, and while my "need to eat" section moves around based on space, I keep track of it pretty well. Most days for lunch, I haul out all the leftovers that are potentials and tell the kids (14 & 12, home schooled so they're here at lunchtime) to pick SOMETHING from the fresh food before they go for items in the pantry or freezer.