But I will tell you what I’ve done this week to minimize food waste at my house.
First, I managed to organize and label all of my 5 gallon buckets I have for food storage! I have a lot of buckets because I buy sugar, wheat, beans, rice, and oats in bulk. I had many more bags of food than buckets until recently when I found the food grade buckets
This week, I braved my basement. I emptied bags of oats, beans, and wheat into buckets and then I labeled them. My hubs helped me get those gamma lids on correctly because, boy, is that hard to do! And now, everything is nice and tidy! And I realized that I need to get busy baking with oats because I have tooooo many of them.
I also tidied my freezer. I’ve been participating in LifeasMom’s Eat from the Pantry Challenge and had an aha moment when I read that she has started reserving her kitchen freezer for the meals they intend to eat that week. I have a freezer in my garage that is full to the bursting and of course a freezer in my kitchen. My kitchen freezer was a huge mess and so unorganized.
So this week I also cleaned it out, rotated things out to the big freezer, and rotated meals and meat that I plan to cook this month from the outside freezer to inside. It made a HUGE difference in my freezer inside and makes it much easier to pull out meat to thaw now that I don’t have to head out in the cold to find whatever I need! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself.
Having all of that tidied and handy makes it less likely for me to waste food. My dried goods are safe from bugs and other types of loss in the buckets and having food easily at hand in my inside freezer makes it easier for me to follow my meal plan! Now I just need to get through my pantry and my spice cabinet and I’ll be very happy!
But most importantly, we ate all of the left overs, so I didn’t have to toss anything in the trash or compost bin! Life is good in Eastern Iowa.
How are you doing with food waste in your house?
Linking up: Food Waste Friday; Homemade Mondays;
About Michelle
Welcome! I'm Michelle and I'm glad you're here. Simplify, Live, Love is a blog about simple life in rural Iowa. We are a self-employed, frugal, green, mostly homeschooling family of 6 working to go off the grid on a modern day homestead in Eastern Iowa. Please subscribe for gardening tips, green living hints, recipes, fun giveaways, and frugal ideas. Thanks for stopping by.
Your freezer looks great! I need to tackle ours this weekend because it is almost overflowing. I guess it doesn’t help that I have half a watermelon in there!
I also love your food grade buckets. I am dreaming about being able to buy things in bulk like that one day
Thanks!! It actually saves me lots of money to buy those things in bulk. I <3 it!
I need to do this… Now that we are moving 2000 miles away in less than 2 month I need to do it more than ever!
You have inspired me! Today my goal is to clean out my Fridge and freezer inside and the freezer outside. Gulp.
I may link up to Food waste Friday if my waste is not too bad.
Next Friday for sure though!
I think I’ll definatly be more diligent (sp?)about eating leftovers if I’m planning on posting a picture of all my wasted food at the end of each week.
I’m a huge advocate of an organised fridge/freezer…without a doubt it reduces waste! Great job!
I would love to stock up lots of the basics but I don’t have any room to store them safely. I have a big container for flour, bread flour and another a little smaller container for sugar. I keep a lot of the other stuff in the freezer like oatmeal, whole wheat flour, and choc chips. I guess I should look into bigger storage somewhere so that I can stock up. I cleaned out the freezer and fridge upstairs and the basement freezer to get organized but I haven’t pulled out the stuff that we are going to be eating this week. What a great reminder on how to stay organized so that you use everything and don’t waste anything.
Thanks for your comment, Alison! I can’t believe I never thought of using my kitchen freezer for weekly or monthly meals… It’s helping me a lot. Good luck to you!