Spent $260 on a chest freezer for my garage and it cut my grocery bill by $80 a month
I used to toss half my produce and meat because it went bad before I could cook it, so I finally bought a small chest freezer for the garage back in March. Now I buy meat and frozen veggies in bulk when they go on sale at Costco and portion everything out, which has trimmed about $80 off my monthly food spending. Anyone else doing the freezer stockpile thing, and do you keep a written list taped to the lid so you don't forget what's buried at the bottom?
Oh man, we did the same thing last fall and it made a huge difference. I read somewhere that the average family throws out like a third of the food they buy, and that number felt way too real once I started paying attention. My biggest win was buying a whole pork loin when it hit $1.99 a pound and having the butcher cut it into chops for free, then I wrapped them in twos and stacked them in the basket. The list taped to the lid is smart, but I went a step further and just use a dry erase marker right on the freezer itself. Nothing worse than finding a mystery bag of something from eight months ago and having no clue what it is.