Food is one of the biggest things many households can waste each week.
We simply have gotten into a routine where we buy food in each week, and throw out what hasn’t been used, what has been left to spoil or just what we don’t fancy anymore.
The amount of money being wasted is rising and food is the main culprit.
Since Bryan and I are doing as much as we can to save money, I thought this was a great topic to bring up.
We felt horrible the other day throwing out so much excess produce from our fridge and starting clean, that we decided it was a great time to revisit how we can stop wasting food.
I thought I would share with you four easy ways you can reduce the food waste in your home.
I hope these tips have a positive impact on what you spend and the foods that you purchase.
Meal planning
Planning out your meals is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you don’t waste food in your home.
We can all be guilty of walking around the shops aimlessly trying to figure out what we need to buy, and then end up with too much and very little meals that we can make. Sound familiar?
Meal planning can help you eliminate the doubt and panic buying process. Instead you know exactly what you need for the week or few days ahead and therefore only buy what you need for those meals.
You end up saving a fortune as you are less likely to buy things you don’t need and therefore throw away less or nothing at all come the end of the week.
Dehydrating certain foods
Sometimes life can get in the way and we can be busy that we don’t end up eating what we had planned, but it doesn’t mean that the food needs to be wasted as there are other methods you can try to preserve the food for longer.
Heading to websites like dehydratedfoodz.com can help with food waste. Dehydrators can be used to suck out the moisture of foods like meat, fruit and vegetables. Dehydrated foods are great snacks for later!
Finding other uses for leftovers
Ever feel like you get to the end of the week with a lot of leftovers?
It is the same for many families and even with careful purchases and meal plans you can be left with food about to spoil unless you do something with it.
Learn to love your leftovers and find other uses for them. For example, pieces of bread that are past their best could be blitzed into breadcrumbs and used for toppings of meals like lasagnas and pasta bakes.
Fruit could be whizzed up and then frozen as icy treats or made into fruit juices.
You could even have a night in the week dedicate dot leftovers where you eat a concoction of things that would have been wasted.
It can be an easy meal to make and quite fun to just snack on different types of foods at once.
Loving your freezer
Finally, when it comes to food waste start to love your freezer.
It is your biggest asset.
Freezer leftover meals for another night, regularly check dates on fresh food and freeze them before they spoil if you won’t get time to use before.
You can freeze alot and being aware of what you can and can’t will help you to save on the food wastage. There’s some great advice here on what foods freeze well.
I hope that these tips help you to reduce the food waste in your home.
We’re going to do our part to make sure we use everything we’ve got.
