Don’t Stuff Your Fridge – Frugal Tip

This week’s frugal tip is something I picked up from my mom when we were visiting the past two weeks. It has to do with her fridge and how she uses it to waste almost no food. One of the advantages of European fridges is that they are much smaller. As a result there’s less of a chance for things to get pushed to the back corner where you can’t find them until they have spoiled.

In addition to having a much smaller fridge, my mom doesn’t have all that much in there. She’s down to 2 o 3 condiments, a bit of jam and a little cheese and sandwich meat in addition to any produce and meat that she’ll be cooking over the next 48 hours.

How can we adapt this to our American fridges? I’m going to start by emptying, cleaning and reorganizing my fridge. Along the way I’ll be making a plan to use up what’s in there a the moment. Between the fridge and pantry, I should have plenty to fix for breakfast lunch and dinner for the next few days.

After that, I’ll create our meals based on what’s growing in the garden and what I can find on sale at the grocery store. I’ve noticed that it helps to start out in the meat section and then create meals on the fly based on what I can find there. Of course not every meal will include meat, frugal staples like pasta and veggies with sauce or pinto beans and cornbread are still on the menu along with egg dishes.

The key to saving money will be to take advantage of sales and deals on expensive food like meat and fresh produce along with making sure that no food is thrown out. And who knows… by the time we need a new fridge, I might be ready to go with a smaller model which will save space and energy in the long run.