A Clean Refrigerator Is A Happy Refrigerator

The new year is the time most of us begin organizing our homes.  We have a bug to clean out closets, cupboards, paper work, freezers and whatever else has been hanging over us.  There is one area in our homes that if we kept organized every week, we could save lots of cash.  The refrigerator.

Lots of money gets lost in a refrigerator, for 2 reasons.   Buying too much and  stuffing that cold box with too much.

Buying too much.  This comes from a lack of planning.  Each person in a family likes a different fruit.  If you check out how much of the item the person eats each week, or when they stop eating it for some reason, there would be less waste.  For example.  You like plums.  As a rule, you eat one every other day.  You need 4 plums for the week.  When you're at the store you see the plums and are craving them so you pack a baggie to the top and secure tightly.  Anything over the four plums you normally eat will waste because they don't keep too long after their 2 week trip to the store.  If this is routine, no one notices the waste.  Once you figure out the usage, the money starts lining your pockets rather than the store's.

Having too much in the refrigerator.  See the above and keep an eye on the leftovers and the weekly menu.  There's no need to have 7 different dinners in a week.  If a chicken is on the shopping list, have 2 - 3 meals with chicken in them.  Roasted, chicken salad, and soup.  Use the leftover veggies from the week in the soup on the weekend.  (I freeze the veggies, then add them to the stock frozen.)

A full refrigerator wastes power because it has to work too hard to cool things down.  A full freezer is a happy freezer and uses less power to keep things cold.

Just to let you know I have been taken hostage by buying too much too.  I confess that I would buy a sandwich meat my husband wanted and a different one my son wanted.  I would buy a pound of each.  My husband would finish his, my son would waste half of his.  A light bulb went on (way too late) and I began buying half of the amount of an item my son wanted.  No waste now.  It was a habit for me, left over from when we were raising a large family.

This is one way to add to your savings at the grocery.  Some day soon, using all of the little ways to save, you will wonder where all your extra cash came from.