A graphic of a shopping basket containing various items
Episode 57 – How to Reduce Food Waste at Home

In this podcast, Lesley and Ingrid chat about National Organising Week with the focus on decluttering and organising to reduce food waste. There is a large focus at the moment on decreasing food waste. Most food waste comes from a lack of organisation when shopping or meal planning. We discuss things you can put in place to reduce unnecessary food waste in your home.
Prefer to read rather than listen?
Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:22  
Hello and welcome listeners to Episode 57 of the declutter hub podcast. I'm Ingrid timelessly. If you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the show for you, as well as the free resources on the declutter hub.com website like the podcast checklist and guess blocks. We also have an exclusive area where we guide our members step by step to declutter their homes. We realise this can be very overwhelming. So we're there every step of the way. With courses live q&a and a community discussion. Take a look on members dot declutter hub.com. In today's episodes, Lesley and I are talking about how you can organise your food to reduce food waste. Now Lesley this week is Aptos national organising week here in the UK. And the theme for this year is food waste. So today's podcast is the perfect opportunity for us to talk about organising your food to reduce food waste.

Lesley  1:21  
Well, first things first, I think we need to talk a little bit about what Abdo is because we just said it's national organising week and that's run by Abdo. So Abdo is the Association of Professional decluttering and organisers in the UK. You and I have both been part of that organisation for over 10 years and we've spent many years running it as well. So we're big advocates of Abdo is the perfect place if anybody wants to use a professional organiser one to one to find someone to work with as well. So Abdo is the place to be. There are two occasions in the year when we have a specific week. One is national organising week, which is this week, and the other one is spring clearing week, which is in the spring, obviously. So that's what Abdo is. And this year for national organising we they thought they would focus on food and food waste, which is why we're here to talk about it today is very topical, isn't it?

Ingrid  2:09  
This was on our list anyway to discuss, especially since we've recently done a podcast about meal planning, which we'll come back to a little bit later. But I think for me, I really love food. I don't know, maybe it's because of my background in hotel management. And I've always loved cooking and serving and having friends over for dinner and all those things. But um, on the other hand, also quite frugal as you as our listeners probably know by now. And I hate wasting things. So food waste is actually a great topic for us, I think to discuss and to talk about.

Lesley  2:38  
Yeah, and the amount of food waste in the UK. Have you seen whatever statistic you see about it, and I won't quote one now. It's always really, really soul destroying, isn't it to see how much food goes to waste when there are so many so many people around the world that are struggling to feed themselves. Yeah, it's an interesting one, really, because you know, you've got your relationship with food. And so do I know I, I was very conscious of the way the waste that there was in my family as my family started to diminish in terms of the amount of people who lived at home. So what I do in terms of food waste is I use something called HelloFresh, which some people will have heard about. And there's another one there's other ones as well. So it's boxed meals them where they prepare all the ingredients, and send them all in a box. So there's absolutely no food waste whatsoever, which I love. But it comes at a price as well. And there is packaging waste. And so there's always swings and roundabouts with everything isn't the really but HelloFresh in terms of food waste absolutely works really well for me.

Ingrid  3:35  
Yeah, I think for me it is that we do a weekly shop. And at the moment, my husband is in charge of the weekly shop and I tell you there is nothing in this cupboards that can go to waste, because I think he's a bit better at shopping less food than I was. So we're very conscious of not trying to throw anything away as much as we can. And in this podcast, we're going to give a couple of suggestions to our listeners as well.

Lesley  4:00  
Yeah, definitely. So the first thing you know, just talks about young girls out every week does the food shopping, so you can get it delivered exactly the same. The principle is the same, is the important thing is to shop with a list and not go willy nilly. So when you're in a shop, there's so many temptations everywhere around every aisle that you go, there's special offers trying to grab your attention and say, Oh, that sounds good. I'm gonna try that this week. Or if you're online shopping, you get to the end of your list. And it's saying why we thought about this. Why don't you think about this? Have you seen our special offer on this? So there's so many temptations every step of the way isn't the one your food shopping either online or in the shop to take you slightly off track. But the important thing is to really really and this is not just for food. This is for new clothes shopping or home shopping anything like that. Absolutely. Make sure you shop with a list. That's rule number one, isn't it?

Ingrid  4:47  
Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean for me, I mean, I know my husband really has a lot of the things that we finished during the week we write on a list. So for me, I don't show with a list but the list is in my head because As I take my trolley the same way through the supermarket every week, and that's why I absolutely hate it if supermarkets change their aisles around, because I'm like, I can't find stuff anymore. I know exactly where everything was. And also, then it triggered my mind to pick up something that I know I need to get. But having said that, working with the list is absolutely brilliant. And it will definitely help not to over buy. And I think we get so tempted into shops, and the main thing is, you know, buy buy two, get one free, you don't need it, you don't need it. Unless you know it's rice, you eat rice every week, then you can say, right, that makes sense to buy on an offer. But if it's something random that you know, you're never gonna eat again, then don't waste your money on something that you're not going to eat at. All right?

Lesley  5:49  
Yeah, I think you said something quite interesting that Ingrid, which is that you your list is in your head. And I'm a little bit like that. But we have to know the kind of people that we are, you know, we are the kind of people who are quite meticulous, who can multitask and think about that kind of things. And we have quite a structured mind. So that will work well for us. But it's not going to work well for a lot of our listeners. So shopping with a list is definitely better. You know, go through, do the list before you go out. And then check the cupboards before you go out to see what you've got. Because that's whenever buying comes in. So if you think oh, I need rice every week, because we rice every week. But do you finish the rice every week? Probably not. We did a podcast with one of my clients Cheryl, who said that she with her family. They'd always gone shopping on a Saturday morning. So they did it every Saturday morning. And she struggled to make that shift to know that she didn't need to go out shopping every single week. And so I think a lot of it is about habit as well, isn't it? You know, my father in law, bless him goes every Saturday morning at 10 o'clock sharp and I'm like, why are you doing that when it's the shops are at the busier. Because that's what he's always done. You don't like just go on a Tuesday, we're tired. You don't need to go on a Saturday morning. But it just insists on going to the supermarket on the busiest morning of the week to do his shopping. Because it's habit isn't it. So it's interesting. So yeah, shop with a list is really really critical part of it. I think you said

Ingrid  7:05  
something really important there as well. Have a look in your fridge, have a look in your cupboards have a look in your freezer, when you write your list and check what you already have. So you're not going to overbuy when you're shopping, and you will buy less food, if you have lots of stuff left over still that needs to be eaten first.

Lesley  7:27  
One of the other things that I think is really, really important as well when you go shopping, is we do seem to have a fixation with bulk buying to try and save money. I think the other thing to bear in mind is not to bulk buy if you don't have the space. And so it's a space thing. And it's a money thing really with bulk buying. Again, we always think that we're going to save money if we bulk buy. And that's not necessarily the way that it works, because sometimes you can bulk buy and then it can go off before you've used it. As well as that you need to focus on the decluttering side, if you're bulk buying and you've not got space to store it, it's cluttering up your work surfaces and the top of your fridge. So this is really a compromise what's more importantly, than the slight money saving, or the sort of decluttering and the order that I've got in my kitchen, or money, you know, you have to factor several things into into one. But really think about that before you go out shopping and bulk buying is not always the best option.

Ingrid  8:19  
Actually the same goes and this kind of ties really neatly in our next topic how to organise your food cupboard that a lot of people end up for example, with cereal, they buy a one kilo pack, while the cupboard can only hold a package that's 500 grammes. And then the box is too big for the cupboard. And of course the box that ends up either on the fridge or on the counter because it doesn't fit. And then immediately visually, you're looking at cluttered spaces that you need to prepare your lunch or prepare your breakfast. So you also need to think about what kind of size packaging fits in my food cupboard. So it actually helps towards a less cluttered look in my kitchen.

Lesley  9:02  
Exactly. So writing grid the amount of times that I've done kitchens in people's homes, and they're like, How can I avoid this situation with the cereals being out on the work surface? And I'm like, buy a smaller pocket. Like, oh, I never thought of that. You know so it's one of those things but again, you coming down to money aren't you and wasting money because obviously you know a lot of times you can get a 350 for three pounds and a 500 might only be three pounds 25 So you have to look at the money side of it as well. But you know, factor everything in and what's your driver? Is it decluttering? Is it clear work surfaces in money? Is it having stuff in what what is your driver in terms of food, but what we don't want is you know, we always find ourselves dragged into cluttered work surfaces, even though we're supposed to be talking about food waste, even when we can't help ourselves. Anyway, so, so that's that really so it's really important to to think about that to think about the size of things when you're buying things and biggest is not always the best.

Ingrid  9:57  
So let's talk some more than about or organising your food cupboard. So what can we do? Or what kind of advice can we give our listeners, when they open a food committee can kind of Yeah, I can see what I have. And this makes sense and everything is together. So what is our advice here,

Lesley  10:12  
we've done a couple of other podcasts, haven't we on kitchens where we talk very much about organisation within a kitchen, which is absolutely critical. But when we focus very much on food waste here, the two things that we always need to look at is visibility and accessibility, those are the two critical points, because if you can't see something, or you can't get to it, you're not going to use it. And so you definitely need to focus on those two things. And you can do that in several ways. And it's going to be very dependent on the type of space that you've got. So for me, I'm super lucky in my kitchen, I've got a LeMans unit, which is those things that concertina out. And there's different ways of doing that, you can replicate that with boxes. And what that means is that the shelf is going to swing out of the cupboard, so you can see everything really well. And what I do then within my LeMans unit is are then organised like with like, it may be that you've just got a standard food cupboard, a wall cupboard or base unit. But what you need to do is need to make sure that you're lining things up. So you can see exactly how many soups you've got, how many beans, you've got, how many Rice's you've got, how many pastures you've got, etc. The other thing that I would say is, if you've got a very high cupboard, that's very difficult to access or see things, what you can do is you can use boxes or containers within those high cupboards, and you can lift things down from the high cupboards that you can see into them, you know, because we don't always have the perfect kitchen space. And we have to make do with what we've got. Sometimes we might even have to put things on the top of the cupboards if we haven't got space in the cupboards. But if you can box things up, and that really, really does help in terms of accessibility and visibility long term.

Ingrid  11:48  
For me as well. I do have my writers and my pastor in my higher cupboard and materials. So they're kind of you, they're bigger, it's easier to get them in and out. And on on ilevel. I've got all my tins. If you work with tins, and you eat soups, or beans or anything like that, if you buy something new, put them in the back. And when you do something next, get the the one on the front out first. So you kind of get an one in one out system, and you use up your oldest one always. So again, you don't then waste any of those things that are in tins and of course tins have a longer shelf life, then fresh fruit and fruit and veg. But still there comes a point you're gonna have to finish eating it. Now, let's talk a little bit more about meal planning. Dan Lesley, we've recently done a wonderful podcast with Milan about meal planning. But meal planning is super helpful to reduce food waste, of course.

Lesley  12:45  
Yeah, it's also a bit of a chicken and egg really, isn't it? What do you do? First you do the shopping or the meal planning. So in principle, obviously, you should do your meal planning before you do shopping. And so you could shop to your list for your meal plan. But that's not always the way that it works is it sometimes we have to meal plan from what we've already got in. So I think rather than going into meal planning in a lot of detail, what we're going to tell you to do is to go back and listen to episode 54. If you've not done that already, because we Len goes into in great detail. And that will give you some fantastic hints and tips about how to meal plan effectively for your family.

Ingrid  13:17  
Yes, definitely. And I think also the thing about meal planning is because when you meal plan, you can shop much more efficiently buying less food. So there's also less food to waste as well. So I think that's really helpful. We also have a free resource on our declutter app.com website. So if you're interested in a meal planning checklist, go ahead and check that out. Now, a big part of food waste is left overs. One leak that is left are a couple of carrots or three apples that nobody's been eating that week. So do we have some tips for our listeners how to deal with those kinds of things, Lesley?

Lesley  13:55  
Yeah, I think it's really useful to have like a sort of leftovers day, isn't it and try and be inventive about what kind of meals you make on that day. You know, the good thing is, there's so many fantastic websites out there at the moment. And you can literally just put in some of the key ingredients, and it will make suggestions with what kind of meals you can make from the food that you've got. So that's always really, really useful if you've got something that you know, it's a little bit random.

Ingrid  14:17  
I actually remember literally from from when I was growing up that on Thursday or Friday or whatever, we always had a leftover day, I think was our least favourite day of the week.

Lesley  14:28  
You get some sort of random leftover days with my kids and everyone's everyone's having a completely different meal aren't they're all very strange. But for me, you know, it's a declutter, who likes to make sure everything's used up. Even though in our nature, we like to get rid of things that we no longer need, we're equally likely to get value out of the things that we've got. So things like food and toiletries and consumables are something that I'm always really focused on not throwing away unnecessarily. So yeah, so it's really important, isn't it to make the most of those. I think it's important as well that to know about Freezing leftovers and that you can't freeze everything. Of course you can't. But if it is vegetables, you know, you can make a nice soup out of something can't eat, it doesn't take many vegetables to make a super most of us have got the other things that you need for a soup already in our food cupboard. So use those leftovers, advance prepare things like soups, and or you can freeze herbs and things like that herbs is always something isn't it that tend to go kind of mouldy and Brown at the bottom of our fridges. Because we buy it within tentative have not used it within a couple of days it's gone off. So try and get it in good time. And you can freeze herbs, and there's loads of resources, again, online telling you how to do that effectively.

Ingrid  15:37  
Yeah, I mean, for example, when I make a red sauce for spaghetti or facili or tagliatelle or something, I always make a very big jar of red sauce, so I can put some in the freezer. So next time, it's easier for me to just blow up pasta and have the sauce on top of that. So that saves you also from having to cook a meal from scratch on a weekday when you've got a busy day. And that kind of brings us near very neatly into, don't forget to eat stuff out of your freezer, because you can't leave stuff in there forever. I mean, there are whole rules about some things you can put in a month or three months or six months. And it also depends how cold your freezer can freeze. But don't forget to eat the stuff that's in your freezer, because otherwise you're going to end up throwing that away. And that kind of defeats the whole purpose, isn't it?

Lesley  16:25  
I think just jumping back to what I was saying before, there's a lot of satisfaction during the amount of using things are out of your freezer, you know, so if you have a wait and it can be can be a week might need a couple of things depends on the size of your family, of course. But after you can say I'm not going shopping this week, I'm going to use everything out of my freezer. And again, it might be quite random meals that you're making. But there's nothing more satisfying than that is there not having done any food shopping for we can use what's already in your freezer.

Ingrid  16:51  
I just love to save money. You save lots and lots of money, you know, frugal me again, just being able to finish something and not spend money on something, I think that's really great. Because in the end, everything that you throw away is wasted money. And if you can one way or the other, keep it revive it, freeze it, eat it and not throw it away. I think that's a win.

Lesley  17:16  
Definitely. So I think that's given, we've given some food for thought there in terms of some of the things that people can do for food waste and to avoid food waste. And so there's two things really, there's the wasting of the food, and then there's the saving of the money. So those are the two things that are really critical. So for me, in terms of a kitchen, and what you do, it's definitely all about keeping things visible, keeping things accessible, so that you know what it is that you've got in there. So you can use them effectively shopping effectively with a list. And so pre planning your shopping, pre planning your meals as well. And then eating your leftovers.

Ingrid  17:53  
Yeah, sounds good to me and add the last thing I would like to share with the listeners. If you have any food or tins or rice or pasta that you're not going to eat or you've made a mistake with bulk buying and you've now got so much that you're not you're not gonna see yourself eating them within the next year. Please consider donating to a food bank because there's so many people who do need food to supply their daily lives and please make sure that the dates are of course indeed before donating. So listeners that's it for this episode. We hope you've all enjoyed listening and are inspired to take action. Why not follow national organising week from Abdo. They have a fantastic Facebook page. They are on Twitter, their Instagram, and they will have lots of tips and blogs and interesting conversations going on about food waste this week for national organising week. So check out at Abdo UK, we hope you're going to have a look at your cupboards and maybe there's some clearing out there as well. Or maybe get creative and put in a couple of ingredients into Google and see what kind of leftover meal they're going to come up with and maybe you can save some money there as well. So thanks for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice please follow us on social media. We are an Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as at declutter hub, and we have a lively supportive Facebook group community where we chat all things clutter, just search for the declutter community and we'd love to see you there. Take a look at members dot declutter hub.com To find out more about our membership. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episode, subscribe to the declutter hub podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher and it will pop into your notifications each Friday, see you next time.

Outro  19:38  
Thanks for listening to the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.
Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode
Listen on
Apple Podcasts
Listen on
Amazon Music
Listen on
Spotify
Watch on
YouTube
Prefer to watch rather than listen? Watch on YouTube