To make meal planning easier, and to ensure you aren’t wasting food, keep your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer decluttered. Start by decluttering your food supply (step one) or skip ahead to some best practices you can implement to maintain your decluttered food storage spaces (step two).
Step One: Declutter
1. Remove all the food from your pantry, refrigerator, or freezer (do one space at a time).
2. Clean out the empty space.
3. Discard any spoiled food.
4. Donate or give away any food you won’t eat.
5. Combine duplicates.
6. Return items by grouping similar items together. Be sure to separate any items that need to be used quickly and keep them front and center so you use them up.
Step Two: Implement Best Practices To Keep Your Space Decluttered
Modify recipes so you use up any specialty ingredients you wouldn’t finish otherwise.
Limit your spices to the ones you use most often. If a recipe calls for something you don’t typically use, just skip it or exchange it for something similar that you have.
Plan your meals each week by starting with what you already have in your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry.
Plan to have a leftover meal. I normally do this once a week. I’ll pull out all of our leftovers and my family takes turns selecting their meal for the evening. This is also a great way to finish up small portions of food.
Avoid buying things in bulk unless you use up the portion before your next trip to the store.
Stick to your list when you are grocery shopping.
Use clear containers so you can see what you have.
These are excellent tips. Something else I do is look for items I can substitute so I don’t need as many items. I discovered that plain Greek yogurt tastes identical to sour cream. I no longer buy sour cream.
Oh, that’s a good one I’ll have to remember. I struggle to finish sour cream!
Great tips! I plan all of our meals and as a result, often get told my cupboard and fridge look “bare” (especially at the end of the week). But they’re not bare, they just don’t have things accumulating!
Also 100% agree with Michelle, Greek yoghurt is a superb substitute for sour cream.
Haha. Mine looks the same way! I often have my mom tell me it looks like I need to go to the store, but I have enough to get by.😀
Great tips to organize & waste less, Suzanne! It hurts my heart to waste food. I also make a “kitchen soup” when I have small portions of different veggies left at the end of the week. I sometimes throw in cooked rice, millet, quinoa, or whatever else is already prepared in abundance. My life partner says he likes my kitchen soups more than other soups! Thanks for yet another helpful post! 🌞
Sometimes those thrown-together meals make the best ones! I’m glad you found a yummy way to use your leftovers.😀
Great tips, especially the spice substitution, I have bought spices to use a tiny bit in one recipe, too wasteful. The tip in the comments about greek yoghurt and sour cream is so useful too 😀
The first time I went through my spices, I was shocked at how old some of them were! I decided right away to get rid of them and not replace them. It became a fun challenge to alter my recipes to use only my most used spices.
I’m going to try that Greek yogurt tip too!!