Confessions of a Failed New Year's Resolution

The title may be a little over dramatic, but after completing a sad sad task, I'm feeling a little bummed. Although, that is why I am here. I'm confessing my original success and my current failure and then I am going to jump back on the resolution train!!

As I mentioned in my last blog, our grocery budget is the big monster that I've been trying to get under control. There are 3 ways I have set out to accomplish my goal: Meal planning, coupon clipping, and less waste. Today....it's all about the waste :(.

The last 2 months (I started this resolution back in December) I have been really good about using all of our groceries, and not letting things go to waste. Left overs have been eaten, the last bits of veggies and fruit have been added to random dishes, fruit salads, and smoothies in order to make sure our food and money did not end up in the trash.

Last month I started to doing some research on our food waste as an american culture. The numbers were shocking!! First of all, the average household wastes 25% off the food that comes into their house. Think about your food budget, now take 25% off that and imagine just tossing it into the trash! It makes me sick to my stomach! For those of you who might not have a specified grocery budget, this works out to be about $600 a year for the average family. One other number that stood out to me, that had nothing to do with my personal financial situation but still was eye opening, is that about 40% of what the U.S. harvests every year.....never gets eaten!!!! Just think about how many hungry people there are in the the world, how many people could we be feeding with this waste! The percentage of food waste comes from a few areas: from harvest to grocery store (food gets bruised, goes bad, etc), from grocery store to home (things that don't get purchased before the expiration date), from household food waste, restaurant left overs that never make it home, the list could go on and on....

I don't think there is much at this time in my life I can do to effect how we run our country and our food production, but I know that I can make a difference in my own home!

Here are a few things I've been doing in my home to stop wasting food:

1) Meal plans. With out a plan, food gets purchased with good intention of getting prepared, but with out a plan, it often sits with no where to go. No recipe to be included in. Forgotten. Eventually thrown away.

2) Keeping inventory. When making a meal plan, actually going through my fridge and pantry to see what I have. I create meals around what I have left from the week before to make sure everything gets used.

3) Wait just one more day to shop. I know you may not have milk for one more day, or you might be out of cereal....BUT, this forces you to get creative. No milk and cereal for breakfast, maybe you'll whip up a quick fruit salad with those random pieces of produce that no seems to be interested in eating, with a side of yogurt that only has a few days left before it goes bad. If you run off to the store, you are going to buy new fruit that will be way more exciting to eat then what you ate last week, and that yogurt will get shoved to the back of your fridge with the addition of all your new purchases. You'll have those left overs from 3 nights ago because there is no other option. I know this sounds crazy, but waiting an extra day or two on my shopping trip has really worked for me!

4) K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid). I've tried to keep my meals simple. If it requires a bunch of weird ingredients that I don't use on a regular basis, I don't make it! There are plenty of recipes out there that have ingredients that I will use regularly and therefore will not get wasted! For me, things like wasabi paste, fish sauce, tapenade, etc.....are just not going to be used in my house and eventually get thrown away. This also helps with the grocery bill, I'm not paying $5 or $6 on a specialty item that I won't use, and lets be honest, I don't really need. For those of you who might be thinking that my meals are boring and bland....they are not. I still have lots of variety and fun in the kitchen :).

5) Bread crumbs. It's a small thing, but it is one of my favorites. No one in my house likes the heal of the bread and I hated throwing away 2 whole pieces of bread every week. Then there is always that loaf of french bread you buy to go with soup or pasta.....do you ever finish that last "nub"? Well, I make bread crumbs! Pop it in your food processor or blender after it goes stale. Then, I usually leave it out an extra few hours to get rid of any moister, and then put it in a tupperware, mason jar, or whatever type of holding device you choose. You can always add italian spices, or other flavors as you need it!

6) Put left overs in portioned containers. For all of you working folks out there, how often do you have left overs at home that never make it to work for lunch? Is it because you ran out of time to move your lunch size amount into a new tupperware? My guess is that this has happened a time or two. When I am packing up my left overs after dinner, I put them into lunch sized portions so as Jordan runs out for work in the morning I just have to hand him the container!

7) Empty Fridge. When all is said and done, my pantry, fridge, and freezer stay pretty empty. This helps me to see what I actually have on hand, and things aren't lost and forgotten!

Here comes the confession. Although these things have helped me tremendously, I have fallen of the band wagon. I just spent 20 minutes going through my fridge throwing away food :(. With each emptied container a part of my heart broke. The half of a pear that I could have eaten a few days ago, got passed up as my afternoon snack for the cookies I had made the night before. The left over mac and cheese was upstaged to the pot roast that I made too much of earlier in the week. The list goes on.

I'm not going to let this one week get me down. My fridge is clean, my meals have been planned, and I am moving forward.

I wish all of you luck as I hope you accept this blog as a challenge to have less waste in your home. Not only to help your food budget, but also to help us as a nation become slightly less wasteful. If any of you out there have any other great tips on cutting back on food waste, please share them...I need some new ideas and new motivation!

Minty Fresh

Last summer, Jordan discovered a wonderful online tool called Mint.com. For those of you who haven't heard about it, it is a website that you link to your bank account, credit cards, school loans, savings accounts, 401k's, and any other financial "stuff" you might have going on (it is super safe and secure, otherwise Jordan would have never opened and account). This tool tracks the money coming in and out of your life. It then catagorizes what you are spending into groups that you select, i.e. food/dining, rent/mortgage, shopping, entertainment, car payment, car insurance, phone bills, etc, etc, etc...

This last summer we signed up. We didn't initially create a budget because we were honestly not sure how much we were spending each month and what exactly we were spending it on. Well, after that first month we were horribly aware of where our money was going, and how much of it was doing just that.....GOING! We sat down and looked at the areas that we could cut back. Jordan and I have always tried to live pretty simply. We don't have a new car, so we don't have a huge car payment (which we paid off last November!!), we don't have the biggest phone plan, we have the smallest cable package available, so there weren't a lot to save. The one area that surprised us the most and the area that we could effect the most was Food and Dining. It was shocking how much we spent on going out to eat as well as on groceries. In the next few weeks I'm going to go over some of the ways I have cut back because I have a feeling this is where many of us struggle. I have recently read that for most Americans the food bill is the second highest to our rent/mortgage!!

Anyways, I'm sharing this to encourage those of you who are trying to be a little more frugal and aware of your financial situation to check out this website and USE IT! It's a great way of holding yourself accountable to what you are spending every month. For some of you, you might be sickened by the percentage of your paycheck going to Starbucks and that maybe you should buy a travel mug and brew a pot of coffee at home once in a while, for others, you might find that you stop for lunch and few too many times each week and should pack a lunch a little more often. You might realize how much you are paying in credit cards fees/apr's and you need to get on the phone with your credit card companies and see if they can do anything about it? For some, you may see that little spot on the bottom of the page that gives your net worth....and it's not pretty. Some of you may realize that with a few cut backs, you could be putting some money away for a tropical vacation. Hopefully a few of you realize you have some room in your budget to send me a big fatty check :)...j/k, I wanted to see if you were still paying attention! Anyway....

Whatever it is that may surprise you the most, I think the first step to being financially responsible is being financially aware.