Wasted money

What do you waste money on? And I don't even mean things you spend too much money on, but actual waste.

I spend a few minutes cleaning out my fridge this morning, and threw out:

• Full punnet of strawberries
• 1/2 loaf of bread
• 2 peaches
• Salad I made last week (lettuce, tomato, carrot)
• A carrot
• A few green beans (kept most of them but a few were too far gone)
• Yoghurt

With food prices the way they are these days, this is over $10 worth of food - completely wasted.

I'm not alone in this, according to www.savefoodstopwaste.com, Australian's waste 3 million tonnes of food each year, at a cost of $5 billion.

So what can we do? Well there are a lot of tips of the Save Food Stop Waste website, but here are the ones I'm going to try to follow:

1. Plan ahead - plan my meals each week so I am only buying what I need, and make sure I'm go to the supermarket with a list!

2. Freeze more food - this one is a bit hard for me as I live with a flatmate and we have a small fridge, our freezer is usually pretty full. But I'm sure I could have squeezed in some of the bread.

3. Be wary of "specials" that require you to buy in bulk - buying in bulk is a great way to save money - if you are actually going to use the food! Lately I've noticed a lot more specials where you have to buy 2 or 3 of the item to get the saving. Particuarly if you only are cooking for one (like I am) - you may end up throwing these "specials" away - it would have been cheaper to only buy 1, even at the "regular price"