The Hidden Waste on your Kitchen Shelves

Have you ever thought about the size and range of kitchen storage the modern home or apartment has to offer – a drawer for this, shelves for that, and if you don’t have space for a pantry, it doesn’t matter because it all fits in somehow.

There is plenty of shelf space to store all the ingredients you absolutely must have to whip up a meal or a dessert for unexpected company.

At every trip to the supermarket you buy some item that fits the following criteria:

• You’re not sure if you have it, but let’s buy one just in case
• You know you don’t have it, you don’t know when you’ll use it , but let’s buy one just in case

So what happens to this item?

1. It will be used before your next shopping trip.

2. It will stay at the front of the shelf waiting for the right recipe, and then it will be used.

3. On your next shop, you will place another item in front of it, because the new item will definitely be used almost immediately.

4. The old item will be pushed into the back of the shelf, until you can’t see it, and you forget about it.

5. A new item, exactly the same as the old one, will be purchased, because you saw it at the supermarket, couldn’t remember if you had it on hand, but let’s buy it, just in case.

For some of you, item (1) above always happens because you are organized, and have a great memory. Some of you might even get to (2). For most of us though, items (3) through (5) are the most likely outcomes because we are grappling with multiple demands on our time and brain space, and we’re not very serious about saving money.

One day you decide to clean the kitchen cupboard because there will be a few things in back of it that could be stale. And you are shocked to find that it isn’t a few things – it’s a dozen or more things – and you mutter about waste, throw them out and wish you could do better.

If you’re serious about stopping this wasteful cycle, here’s what you do

1. Add up the cost of what you are throwing out. It is typically between $20 and $40 (or even more – but that doesn’t bear thinking about!).

2. Take $40 in paper currency and set fire to it. Can’t bring yourself to do that? Why not? You are about to throw that equivalent into the garbage.

3. Think about the delicious meals or treats you could have prepared using what you are throwing out.

4. Think about how much you paid for the meals you ate instead of the meals or treats in 3 above.

5. Add the cost of these meals to the $40 and now you have a serious amount of waste that could amount to hundreds of dollars over a fairly short period of time – typically about 3 months.

6. Think about what you could have done with this money – reduced your mortgage or credit card debt, paid bills, or just treated yourself or your family to something special.

Now that you are totally aware of what’s going on here, those dark storage spaces suddenly lose their appeal and you can swing into the LCW process:

• Look in the cupboards before you shop
• Check the back of the shelves
• Write a list – don’t rely on memory

It’s simple, but effective strategies like this that mean the difference between cruising comfortably or staggering from one pay check to the next.