Welcome to our month long buy less plan! Read here to get caught up on what’s going on.
Day: 27
Product: So how’s today gone for ya’? Besides being a day retailers have devoted you to shopping all day, it’s also leftover day.
Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever done the full Thanksgiving meal all myself. 9 dishes and 2 pies all made from scratch and ready at the same time. Besides a little fear that the potatoes weren’t boiling fast enough, it all came together wonderfully. The turkey was falling apart moist, my self-described pre-teen was sucking down the gravy wondering why it kept disappearing on his plate as he mixed it with every dish, seconds (and sometimes thirds, and fourths) were had by all.
Thanksgiving is the day we celebrate our blessings by intentional decadence. If we live with this kind of decadence all the time Thanksgiving wouldn’t be special.
That’s why during every other meal I make sure the turkey is dry- maybe a little charred.
No. Of course that’s not what I mean.
I mean that expecting and getting everything you want to the point of uncomfortable bloatedness is not done at every meal. We respect the food and limit ourselves unless it is some special occasion.
I’ve got some horrific statistics for you. 40% of the food produced in the US is thrown away—that’s almost half! The average American throws away 25% of the food they buy. That equals 96 billion pounds of food every year that would be worth $165 billion. The average American household, retailer, and farmer is very wasteful.
It’s not really our fault. It’s what we’re used to. Farmer’s can’t sell produce that’s ugly. Retailers sell more with overstocked displays. Individuals think that food past the best by date is unsafe.
We need to change our thinking and we can do a lot at the home level. I could do a series on food alone for a whole month. Here are a few things:
- Those best by dates are totally arbitrary. Besides baby formula that is regulated by the government, suppliers set their own date standards for their products. It is more financially beneficial to them to hold those dates as tight as possible. That product is not going to magically go bad the moment the calendar rolls over to the day it says on the package. Use your good sense God gave ya’. If it smells, is slimy, or looks different don’t eat it. Otherwise dig in.
- Eat leftovers. Please. Who do you think you are that you need freshly prepared food every meal? Eat some humble pie that was made two days ago. It’s still perfectly good.
- Don’t dig around in the produce department. I know this is a hard one. We want the most for our buck but let me tell you, if you don’t buy that smallish head of lettuce no one will and it will rot in a landfill. It is likely that if you buy the biggest head you won’t eat the entire head and the difference will end up in your trash anyway.
- Buy ugly produce and funky packages. Just two days ago I was buying a two liter of soda. I grabbed one and went to move along when I noticed one without a label. The missing label was sitting next to it, apparently victim of some faulty glue. I put my good one back and picked up the naked one with the loose label for the clerk to scan. If I hadn’t rescued him he would have certainly headed to the dumpster.
- Just buy less. Make a list and stick to it. If your meals are planned you don’t have that broccoli sitting in the fridge just waiting for you to notice him when you’re in the mood to be healthy. Plan when you are going to eat that broccoli so he isn’t stood up and ends up wilting and leaving dejected to your trash can.
- Don’t toss the entire product if some is bad. Of course this doesn’t work for milk but you can safely cut mold off cheese, black spots off cauliflower, and bruises off of apples.
If you can’t bring yourself to do all these things just think of this: what would it be like to have a 25% larger grocery budget? That’s what it would be like if you didn’t throw food away. Eat it all. As your mother would say, there are starving children in Africa who would appreciate that good food.
Oh here’s another statistic: 1 out of 6 of Americans are food insecure and reducing food waste in America by just 15% would provide nutrition to 25 million Americans. Maybe mom was onto something.
Go eat those Thanksgiving leftovers.
Reason to buy less: You don’t want any extra reasons for a thief to be in your house longer.
Suggestion: When you buy things it is important to carefully think through your needs and decide when quality matters. Sometimes (only sometimes) you will want to spend a little more for a higher quality item.
I’m a big fan of dollar stores but sometimes they are just landfill fillers. If that product doesn’t work for you and you have to go back and buy it again you are just perpetuating waste.
This is why I am a huge fan of buying used. If a product has survived someone else’s use and is still going strong, you are buying a quality product.
Now, not everything you own should be the high-end type. A good way to see what you should buy for quality is to buy the first one the dirt cheap version. If you’re use trashes it too quickly to make it worth it, then allow yourself to buy a nicer version. That way you’ve basically earned the right to make that decision.
WondrouslyWeird 