Wasting Less with Bulk Purchases
With spring hopefully around the corner, I have been thinking about how to purge the closets and get rid of stuff that’s been sitting around. I went through our storage closet and found that we had multiple packs of paper towels, where I think I overbuy every time there’s a sale. Fortunately, paper towels are usable for a long time and I don’t anticipate any of the rolls going to waste. Unfortunately, when I was going through the kitchen pantry I found several cans and 2 boxes of oatmeal that were past their use by dates. To cut down on waste, I’m hoping to be better going forward of understanding what’s in the closets and pantry and using up what we have before purchasing more. Here’s what I’m doing:
–Once or twice a year, reorganize your stored items, taking inventory of what you have — Are there some cans lurking in the back of a cabinet? 23 boxes of pasta from the last sale? Do you have medicines in the medicine cabinet that are about to expire? Clear out the items that are too old, and donate the ones that you won’t be able to use again. Make a note of things that your family uses up slower than you think (cough medicine is a good example of this in our house).
–Arrange your items with the first to expire in the front, so that it is easily grabbed – Be sure that you check the expiry date of canned and packaged foods to make sure you are not hoarding things with a use buy date in the 1990′s.
–Plan to use up things right away — when you menu plan after inventorying your pantry, plan around what you have. Be sure that you check your office supplies and toiletries as well.
–If you end up wasting a lot from bulk purchases, maybe you need to scale down your quantities – since I normally shop for a household of two persons, we don’t need the 12-pack items that are at the bulk stores. Although their prices per unit may be slightly lower, I find that in accounting for waste, the savings really don’t materialize. So for us, I find buying smaller packs or single items makes sense.
shared at Works for Me Wednesday
We’ve looked into shopping at places like Costco, or Sam’s Club before but we felt like it would be a waste. We too are a two person household and those big value packs, would simply go bad. Plus, we eat mostly fresh foods, and I can’t see using up the large amounts you have to buy before they went bad.
What a waste of not only food, but also money.
good post.
Wendy, sounds like your situation is similar to ours. I really hate wasting food and money.
Great point!
I’ve entirely stopped storing consumer items as I live in a city centre.
Every week I go through the cabinets and write up all the dishes I can make from what I already have.
(i.e. Casserole: Cabbage, onions, carrot (leftover from previous week), bouillon, soy sauce, spices (especially the Paprika with a due date 2007), ADD: Bacon/spicy sausage.
Soup: Onion, bouillon, bread crumbs, ADD Cheese. etc)
How many portions are needed for the next week (travels, going out etc?)
Then I make a shopping list made up only of those needed items.
It is very satisfying to have weeks where my spending is less then €5 for an entire week.
ps. I bring lunch to work (but I conveniently store them in the freezer at work).
Maria, you sound much more organized than me! I miss living in the city where I can pop over to a small store in about 2 minutes.