Sanity Savers: One Simple Tip to Reduce Food Waste

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Sanity Savers is a series featuring quick tips & tricks and products that we use to make our lives easier.  Easy-to-implement, simple, and fast, these ideas and products help our household run smoothly.

I hate wasting food.  It’s terrible for our environment, a waste of money and effort, and just plain gross to deal with moldy, slimy food that has been forgotten in the back of the fridge.

We have a simple system in our house to reduce food waste – date everything.  Leftovers from dinner?  Write a date on it before it goes in fridge.  Open a jar of salsa or a carton of chicken broth?  Scribble the date on the top.  Crackers, spices, baking ingredients, condiments?  Ditto.  If it’s something that can go bad or lose its flavour or freshness over time, we write the date it was opened right on the package.  

There are a few exceptions to this, of course.  We fly through some things – like milk – so there’s no need to write the date it was opened.  Fruits and vegetables are the same – we go through them quickly, and in any event it’s very obvious when they’ve gone bad!  However, for the vast majority of items, if it’s opened or we’re packing up leftovers, we write the date on it before it’s stored.

Related: Meal Planning 101: Meal Planning Made Easy

This eliminates the need for the “sniff” test before eating leftovers.  And let’s be honest, you’re not going to remember when you opened that jar of salsa.  Although some items may not necessarily go bad, nobody wants to use 10-year-old spices, or eat the crackers that were opened 6 months ago.

Dating everything makes it easy to tell, at a glance, what needs to be used up.  It helps us reduce food waste and saves us time and money.  A win-win in my view!

How do you avoid wasting food?