Making the most of your food costs- My “Zero Waste” Week attempt

As part of my ongoing (now I have returned from holiday) 100 days to make myself fitter & healthier, I’m watching and planning our meals better than ever.  I also like to make sure we try to stick within a set money weekly budget for food and other items, as without thinking ahead you tend to lose track of money very quickly.

It is also nearly the end of the month, and that usually means for us that budgets are running low and time to manage the funds so we don’t overspend.  Budgetting is something that I do without question, as it makes sure we have funds for all the important things in life, and food can sometimes become a luxury that endless spending happens without noticing (lunches out, dinners out, take aways etc).

I was over the moon to have won £50 Morrisons vouchers the past few weeks in the BritMums’ Morrison Summer Ebook competition, and with this little added extra to our budget I wanted to do something far greater and more challenging.

Like every family, it is sometimes very easy to end up throwing away an amount of food each week before the next big shop, simply because it has gone off or is unused.  Without realising we are throwing away good hard earned money when the food could be used for a better purpose aka EATING IT :o)

Reading up on the Zero Waste Week challenge for this year, sadly we have missed it properly by a few weeks, but I love the idea of seeing just how creative you can be to ensure you throw no food away or try to eliminate as much as you throw away full stop for a short period of time.  Obviously the goal is then to use this as a great thinking method moving forward, but I think this sounds like a wonderful challenge even for one week.

This is our fridge as of tonight- filled to the brim with fruit, veg, meats, yogurts etc etc that have been planned as part of what we will eat this week.  However, I also have a freezer filled with back up dinners, bread, rolls, fish, vegetables so that I can throw together a quick dinner if time is very short.

My goal shall be from tomorrow until the end of September (10 days total), I will aim to use up all the food we purchased without throwing away anything come next Tuesday and the next big shop….. This should be easy right??

Maybe I will need to invent some interesting versions of “Fruit Salad” one night….but this should be fun.

Tied in with it though, I am going to step up my own thoughts to how to make this a Zero Waste Week for myself too.  What do I mean by this?  I mean that I want to use my week time to be the best it can be for me too.  That means watching less TV, reading more, exercising more, committing more to my work when I am there etc.  I don’t believe that anyone truly wastes time on purpose, but certainly the world can demand our time when we really want to be doing something else more fun :o)

Will be writing as much as possible how I get on these next 10 days, so watch this space!  Please feel free to join me in my Zero Waste Week and let me know what you achieve too.

Love MFF xx