A couple of months ago I was at home going through our food pantry when I became a little overwhelmed by the amount of random things we had acquired over time. I began pulling out boxes, cans and bags of food in an attempt to take a quick inventory. I noticed a couple of things. First, we had an abundance of certain things that we did not need…I wondered why we had (3) bottles of ketchup and enough cans of chili to feed a small army. Second, I found a lot of items that had gone unused and were now expired. Did you know that crackers turn into cardboard if you store them in your pantry long enough? I then went to the fridge, took inventory again and found the same problem. My wife and I both work and going to the grocery store has always been a chore. When we do find time to go shopping it has always been something that we do together. At the time our tendency was to go to the grocery store once a month and load up the cart to get us through the next (4) weeks. We never went in with a plan or with a list and basically just threw anything in the cart that looked good at the time, which reminds me, never go to the grocery store when you’re hungry. The end result was buying things that we already had or buying things that looked good at the time, but never found their way onto a plate. We also found that we were eating out too often because we perceived that there was nothing to eat at home. This is because we were not planning our meals or keeping enough fresh fruits and vegetables in the house to make a well balanced meal. We were wasting food, wasting money, and not eating healthy in the process. We agreed that something needed to change.
I then began to think of the PRIER model. We needed to keep our inventory lean, buy groceries more often and have a plan for effectively using our inventory at home. Keeping these principles in mind we were confident that we could eliminate wasted food, stop buying the wrong things, prepare better meals and save money in the process.
Here is the process we implemented to accomplish our goal:
Every Monday night we sit down for 5-10 minutes and come up with a meal plan for the week. We come up with a well balance dinner idea for each night and determine what we want to do for lunches as well. We then take a look at our current inventory and make a list of the items we need from the grocery store to get us through that week. One of us is responsible for going to the store after work on Tuesday night and we stick to the list. We often rotate going to the store, so one of us is not going every week. After just a few months we have eliminated wasted food, we are eating healthier, making meals together, eating out way less, keeping our inventory lean and saving money in the process. With our first born on the way in a few months this is money that we will need for all sorts of fun new things.
What’s next? Is there anything else at home that would benefit from the PRIER model? Maybe I should take a quick inventory of the items in our closet. When’s the last time I wore that sweater? What are we doing with all that stuff in the basement? I am sure you have heard of LEAN Manufacturing. Is there such a thing as LEAN living?
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