Xmas has gone and the family has been on a grocery budget the last few weeksJ. I figure that it will not only help pay the mortgage off quicker, but wiser food buying will be better for the environment as it will mean less food purchased and wasted.
So here are our steps so far:
- We have made a commitment to try and go to the grocery shops only once a week to help with budgeting and reducing petrol.
- We go with a list, which is something we never have done before, and the list is planned around possible meals so we know the purchases we make will end up being used. We can be better consumers by making informed purchases rather than random purchases on the spot at a usually crazy grocery store.
- We bulk buy if it’s a good deal and bulk cook where we can and freeze food in plastic containers that have come from other food purchases so we are not wasting money/resources buying plastic containers or bags.
- Once we have shopped we create a meal planner sheet on the fridge so we don’t get tempted to go for takeaways as what is planned for dinner has already been written on the planner.
The result of this is that over the last two weeks we have found that we are throwing away almost no waste food as we plan meals to make the most of the ingredients we have in the house at the time. Also because we plan ahead we can now defrost meat slowly in the fridge rather than wasting power defrosting meat at the last minute in the microwave. And of course with no takeaways there are no takeaway containers.
We’ve even started to barter! We went to dinner last night at the in-laws. We brought the dinner, bulk cooked and frozen from our big Bolognese cook up the previous week. The plastic containers came home with us again! We got organic blueberries in return to take home with us picked from the Blueberry Farm. I then shared some of these blueberries with my Mum who in return brought around cold ginger beers from her fridge.