Kitchen Leftovers

Does your food bill give you stress? Do you throw out fruits and vegetables each week? Do you have freezer burn meat? Do you have 4 or more cans of one item in the cupboards?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this article will give you some answers on how to reduce waste and keep those food bills down.

Go to you kitchen cupboard and take everything out and place on the counter. Go through each item and discard any items that have expired. Give away any food that is unopened, that your family will not eat. Those three cans of sardines that have been in the cupboard over a year. Group your items into like categories. For example, all breakfast food should be grouped together. Items such as oatmeal, cereal, pancake mix... Group all the items and then place them in cupboards closest to the stove. Reorganizing the cupboards will take a couple of hours but is well worth the effort. Write down all the items in the cupboards.

Now it is time to go through the fridge and freezer. Take all the items out of the fridge and regroup all the items. Throw out expired salad dressings, yogourt... Group the fridge items into like categories. Condiments on one shelf, fruits in the crispers and so on. Write down all the items in the fridge. Go to the fridge freezer and reorganize, throwing out expired food and freezer burn items. Regroup the items as above, with the meat in one section and the concentrated juices in another section. Write down all the items in the fridge freezer. Do the same as above for the deep freezer and the cold room.

Take your list of food items and neatly regroup them on another piece of paper. For example, write the heading juice and put the number and flavour of can juices, frozen juices, juice boxes... under this category. Do this for all categories.

Once all items have been placed in a category, think of creative ways to use the items on hand. For example, in my reorganization, I found 4 cans of spaghetti sauce. Our family usually eats spaghetti every two or three weeks. I decided for the next two weeks I would make a lasagna, spaghetti, and penne. The lasagna would require ground meat that was not in my kitchen. This went on the grocery list. The spaghetti and penne would have a vegetarian sauce, I needed one green pepper, a handful of mushrooms from the store. Those items went on the grocery list. I did this for many of the items to decrease the grocery list and expense.

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