10 Tips to Save Money and Reduce Food Waste

My brother, Josh, was in town visiting me around a year ago to help me with some work on my house. As any good host would do when their brother is giving them free labor, I pulled out all the stops to make him a variety of delicious dinners every night. On the last night, he told me that all of the meals have been delicious but what he really wanted was to eat something in my refrigerator that I would throw out if he didn’t eat it. After the initial shock, I directed him to a week-old leftover pizza still in the to-go box and some wilting lettuce on its last leg. He seemed to enjoy it and I pretended not to be too dumbfounded.

After this interaction with my brother, I started paying more attention to my food waste and tried some different things to cut down on the waste in my house. Whenever I successfully prevented food waste, I gave myself “Josh Points” in my head. What was my prize, you may ask? More money in my pocket!

While doing research for this blog, I also interviewed several people like my brother who hate to see food go to waste. Here are the top 10 tips I learned over time and from them:

10 Tips to Save Money and Reduce Food Waste

1. Plan Ahead for Grocery Trips-

One of the best and most helpful ways to reduce food waste is to plan ahead for the meals you plan to make for the week and purchase just the items that you will need for that week. Stores are very good at trying to get you to spend more money and add things to your shopping cart you hadn’t planned on. Stick to a list! And don’t forget to check your pantry before you go to see what you already have on hand as well.

2. First In, First Out (FIFO)-

When I worked at Publix, this was something they drilled into us- FIFO! In the grocery store world, it means you stock the newer items in the very back of the shelf so that people pick up the older product at the front. But in your refrigerator, it means you should eat your leftovers from three days ago before the ones from yesterday. I know, this sounds really simple but you and I both know that those leftovers from three days ago are still in there because that meatloaf wasn’t that great the first time and you’d rather have the pasta from last night. This is when you dig deep and reach for the “Josh Points”. You got this. Don’t forget to follow the grocery store rule and put the newer leftovers behind the older ones to make FIFO easier on the go.

3. Repurposing Leftovers-

This could really be its own blog, but I will share the highlights I learned, and we’ll keep experimenting with this. The most popular option for repurposing leftovers is a soup or stew (sometimes referred to as Goulash). Throw whatever leftover meat and veggies you have, add in some additional favorite ingredients, a liquid chicken/veggie/beef broth, and rice/pasta/potato and there you have it. Another good way to repurpose leftover meat is to make it into a taco base. Don’t have that much? Add in some beans to make it stretch further. Another option is to experiment with making leftovers into a casserole. This isn’t one that I’ve tried before but if you have, share your experiment results in the comments!

4. Freezing

Most anything can be frozen and be just as good months later. You can freeze meat (cooked and uncooked), casserole, lasagna, soup, chili, stew, veggies, fruit and much, much more. Something that I started recently was freezing the fruit that I can’t get to before it goes bad and using it later in smoothies. You can do this with almost any fruit, but I’ve personally tried it with cantaloupe, banana, dragon fruit, strawberries and peaches. Before I started freezing fruit, I almost always wasted at least some fruit each week, so this has been a game changer for me!

5. Lunching on Leftovers

The biggest thing here for me was taking a little bit of extra time when I am putting away the leftovers to pack them in serving size containers so all I have to do in the mornings is grab it. If I have to do a lot of work to pack my lunch in the mornings, I find that sometimes I will talk myself out of doing it and end up eating out instead. If you are someone who doesn’t really like eating the same thing two days in a row, try spicing up the leftovers by adding a different side or using leftover meat for a salad instead. If you really hate leftovers, consider going back to grade school and swapping lunches with a lunch buddy who also cooked something the night before.

6. Ingredient Substitutions

One of the biggest pitfalls people make that cause them to waste food is purchasing ingredients for a recipe that they never use for anything else. If you have a recipe that calls for a cup of spinach, but you never eat spinach in anything else, you may want to try to substitute it with a different vegetable or plan to also make something else that uses spinach as well (or freeze it for your smoothies!). Several dairy ingredients can be substituted as well so don’t buy half and half so you can use 2 tablespoons of it in a recipe when any milk would probably do the trick.

7. Buy Smaller Sizes

This one still gets me because the larger portion size is almost always a better deal. But I try my best to remind myself that even if I am paying more per ounce, the total price is less. And there is the added benefit that I will be less likely to waste food (Give me all the Josh Points!). So, if I never drink the whole gallon of milk, maybe I need to get the half gallon instead. If I can’t eat a whole 3lb bag of potatoes, maybe I need to just buy 3 potatoes by the pound. If you can help it, don’t buy more than you know you’ll be able to eat- especially if it will go bad fast.

8. “Expiration Dates are Just Best-By Dates”

While researching for this blog, I got to hear some great stories of people who use expiration dates loosely to say the least. I was told about 5-year-old Ketchup that was still just fine, meat in the freezer still good after seven years, and the art of cutting off mold from cheese and bread. While I know that not everyone can be such die-hard waste cutters, the principal still remains- “expiration dates are just best-by dates, not must-use-by dates”. Don’t throw it away just because it is out of date- it may be just fine.

9. Say NO to the Sale- “It’s not a deal if you don’t need it”

I mention this in #1 but it is worth expounding on this one. Several years ago, I got really into couponing. I was on all the websites that taught you how to get the very best deal by combining coupons and weekly sales. I picked up all kinds of things for great deals and it felt great to save all of that money. But the four boxes of cereal that I bought for $1 each (you HAD to buy 4 to get the coupon savings) sat in my pantry for 3 years until I moved because I don’t actually eat cereal. Grocery stores will try to get you with BOGO deals, or Buy 2 get 2 Free, Buy 5 and Save $1 per item, and 4 for $10 deals, which will encourage you to buy more of an item when you really only need 1. Don’t let the grocery stores suck you in. Only buy what you need. An insider tip: most stores give you the same deal on just 1 item on BOGO or on a 4 for $10 sale (check your store and the specific sale).

10. Use What You Have

Let’s be honest- sometimes we go grocery shopping for the week with an already full freezer and pantry. It’s just not stuff that we want to cook this week, or we don’t have everything we need for that specific ingredient. So, try making it into a challenge or a game. Challenge yourself to not go shopping the last week of the month and eat only out of your freezer and pantry. Make your own Chopped competition where you make a meal out of random ingredients. Use up some of the older items in your pantry and get some Josh Points!