When our refrigerator went on the fritz and we found out it would take three weeks to get the new part, my husband and I grabbed a large ice chest and small dorm refrigerator from the garage and set about downsizing the contents of our now defunct kitchen appliance. Although it was inconvenient storing our food in such a tiny space, we noticed an unexpected but pleasant result. We were saving money. But how did that happen? After all, we were eating exactly the same as before. On closer inspection, we realized that our broken fridge forced us to change a few bad habits like the way we shopped for groceries and how we prepared our nightly dinner. Here’s what we learned.
1. Cook only what you’ll eat. In the past, when I made dinner for my family which includes three teenage boys, I would always cook a little more with the thought that I would save the rest for leftovers during the week. But nine times out of ten, the leftovers would just sit in the back of my refrigerator until I would eventually throw them in the trash. With my refrigerator out of commission and cold space at a premium, however, I had to be very careful in how much food I would cook each night. By preparing only what I knew we would eat at each meal we rarely had leftovers saving us a bit of cash in the process.
2. Shop for food every few days rather than once a week. Before I used to go grocery shopping once a week buying all our fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy that I thought we would need for the next seven days. Although I was fairly accurate in my estimates, without a doubt something would slip through the cracks. Whether it was a few pieces of fruit, a bag of lettuce or too much fish, there was always something that spoiled and had to be tossed at the end of the week. But now with only a small dorm fridge and camping cooler to store our food, I had to shop every few days buying only what we could use in the next 48 hours. This resulted in very little, if any, food spoilage or money down the drain.
3. Resist impulse buying. Previously, every trip I took to the grocery store included some kind of impulse buy. Whether it was a new type of frozen pizza, tempting deli item, some exotic fruit that I thought would be fun to try or just buying too much of something in general, I would put it in my shopping cart without a second thought. But now without my refrigerator, there simply wasn’t the room to store new things. No more impulse buying meant more money in my pocket.
So how much money did these changes shave off my grocery bill? An impressive $25 a week. Although my refrigerator is once again working, I’ve continued to follow these three simple but cost-effective rules making the $400 repair bill a bit easier to swallow.
