If you’re having trouble getting inspired to declutter your home, here’s one potential motivator. Think about all of the money you can save! If nothing else gets you going, maybe that will. When I started decluttering back in the winter, it was because I had had enough. I was done with all the stuff in my surroundings clogging up my physical and mental space. What I didn’t know and have come to quickly find out was how much money I would save as a result. And I’m not even done yet! 

Because living abundantly through being frugal is so important to me, if I’d thought about it in this way earlier, it might have motivated me to do it sooner. If the same is true for you, I hope what I’ve learned will help you.

You Can Find What You Need When You Need It

This is no small thing! I’ve kept a tally. I’ve been at this for several months and have easily already saved well over $150 on things I didn’t buy. These were things I thought I needed simply because I couldn’t find what I needed when I needed them because they were hidden under piles of other stuff. 

The dumbbell that I was getting ready to replace because I hadn’t been able to find it? Found! Underneath old pillows in the floor of my closet that I’d hung on to because I thought I might need them some day. In reality, no one would ever sleep on those old, dirty things and they were just keeping me from seeing what I really needed to see. 

The gift bags and tissue paper that I knew I had plenty of somewhere but couldn’t see where they should have been? Found! Underneath the old rolls of wrapping paper that had remnants left on them but wouldn’t have been able to wrap anything. 

The spices I was getting ready to buy AGAIN even though I knew I had bought them fairly recently? Found! Behind jars of other spices that I had duplicates of because I kept replacing them when I couldn’t find what I needed!  

You get the point…

You May Be Able to Sell Things That You’re Not Using

Decluttering your home is different than organizing. Decluttering is getting rid of things that you don’t use or need. Organizing is putting the things that you do have in an order that makes them easier to find and use. If you’re truly decluttering, the things that you’re getting rid of may no longer be useful to you, but they may be useful to someone else. That means that selling them through Craig’s List, Facebook Marketplace or in a good old-fashioned yard sale might be an option. 

If You Have a Clutter-Free Outlook, You Probably Won’t Be Buying as Much

While decluttering doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll become a minimalist, you will probably figure out fairly quickly that less can be more. As you declutter your home, I feel certain that you will start looking more critically at the things that you’re considering bringing into the house in the first place. That doesn’t mean that you won’t ever buy something again just because you want it, but it will become more of the exception than the rule. For this, your wallet will thank you! 

Decluttering Your Kitchen May Encourage You to Cook at Home More

If opening your pantry or a kitchen cabinet door makes you feel so queasy from the mess that you immediately call for take-out, it’s time to declutter. Getting rid of that mess can make cooking enjoyable again and something that you may want to do more often. Not only is this better for your bank account, but it will be better for your health as well.

Decluttering May Prevent You from Having to Buy a Bigger Home

Talk about a money saver! This sounds pretty extreme, but it is a possibility. In fact, I would strongly suggest the next time that you get dissatisfied with the space that you have in your current home, that you clean out a closet. If your satisfaction level doesn’t start going up, then begin taking it room by room. After you’ve decluttered pretty much your entire house, if you still feel like you need more space, it might be time to start looking. My prediction is that you may realize that you don’t need more space, you just need less stuff.

You May Find Money and/or Gift Cards That You Forgot About

The idea of finding money and/or gift cards may seem random, but I’m here to say that it can happen. I recently found money in old purses that I thought I couldn’t part with for one reason or another, and I found gift cards tucked away in drawers. I can’t promise it will happen every time, but certainly if the clutter has been building up, your chances are pretty good.  

Decluttering Can Prevent Costly Mistakes in Other Areas of Your Life

Decluttering is just that powerful! Have you ever left the house so frazzled in the morning that you ended up making a big mistake at work? Or has living in a cluttered house ever worn on you so much mentally that you treated other members of your family badly?  All of those mistakes can come with a steep price. Strained relationships, lost confidence in you at work, and poor mental health overall are serious and very real possible consequences of not learning to declutter. Again, I speak from experience here. It is amazing how much lighter and more together you can feel not having to wade through a bunch of needless stuff just to get to the dryer or to get to your shoes. 

Bottom Line on Decluttering Your Home

The fairly simple but often seemingly overwhelming act of decluttering your home won’t automatically make you a millionaire. But, it may very well make you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. As we’ve seen here, decluttering can help you save money in quite a few ways, but most importantly it will allow you to simply make more space in your life for what truly matters. 

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When it comes to food, there are very few of us who can say that our portion sizes are currently too small (except maybe when it comes to vegetables…). In fact, when we’re eating out, our average portion sizes have increased 2-3 times or more from where they were 20 yearsago¹. This, in turn, has played a big part in normalizing what we think of as a normal portion, whether we’re eating at home or eating out. So, for most of us, when it comes to saving money while eating healthier, reducing our portion size is one of the easiest and healthiest things that we can do. 

Portion Size vs. Serving Size

According to the National Institutes of Health, a portion is the amount of food that we choose to eat for a meal or snack². In other words, it’s completely up to us how big or small our portion sizes are. 

Portions often get confused with serving sizes. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics says that a serving is a standardized or measured amount of food³. It may be stated in tablespoons, ounces or cups but is a standard amount that can easily be measured. 

Take for instance a 16-ounce bag of chips. I could easily eat half the bag in one sitting on a really stressful day. In that case, half the bag or 8 ounces would be my portion size. On the other hand, the bag’s nutrition label says that there are about 16 servings in the bag or 1 ounce or about 11 chips per serving. So, if I eat half the bag, I’ve eaten 8 servings and an outrageous number of chips. Hmmm…. 

As another example, if I have an 8-ounce box of pasta, and I fix half the box as one serving, I’ve had a 4-ounce portion of pasta. If you look at this amount compared to what you get for a dinner serving in many restaurants, it’s about the same. The catch though is that the nutrition label on my box of pasta tells me that 2 ounces is a serving size, so I now have to double all of the values listed. Ouch! 

This is where the National Institutes of Health’s idea of “portion distortion¹” comes in. If you want an interesting look at how portion sizes have increased over the past 20 years, be sure and check out their interactive quizzes on that here.

Benefits of Reducing Portion Size

Given the increase in the size of portions over the years, when we talk about reducing them, we’re not talking about unhealthy food restriction. We’re talking about getting back to a healthier way of looking at the amount of food we eat. In general, we simply do not need as much food as many of us are currently consuming. Two of the most significant benefits to reducing our portion sizes come in terms of saving our health and our money.

Health benefits

Regularly eating portions that are larger than what our bodies need takes its toll on our health over time. That’s due in large part because consuming more calories than we burn causes the excess calories to be stored as fat. In turn, too much body fat may cause us to become overweight or obese⁴. In addition, too many simple carbs and too much sugar can wreak havoc on our blood sugar levels, also resulting in many health problems⁵. Here are just some of the risks associated with being overweight, obese or simply eating more food than we need. 

• Eating too much food requires your organs to work harder⁴. 
• Type 2 diabetes⁶
• High blood pressure⁶
• Heart disease and strokes⁶
• Certain types of cancer⁶
• Fatty liver disease⁶

While reducing portion size won’t prevent all of these issues, it will go a long way toward making sure that we’re not needlessly overloading our bodies with food it really doesn’t need or want. It will also enable us to eat a reasonable amount of something that’s not-so-healthy if that’s what we want while at the same time leaving plenty of room for healthy food. 

Money saving benefits

This one is fairly straightforward. If we eat less, our food bill isn’t as high. Again, the idea here isn’t to starve ourselves by any means. That is absolutely not the point. But, if we get back to eating reasonable amounts of food, we can stretch our food budget even further or invest in healthy foods that we might have otherwise thought were too expensive.

Take my bag of chips. What would have been two servings on a couple of really tough days or even 4-5 servings in amounts that many of us would regularly eat, could actually be up to 16 servings. That means that instead of going through a bag of chips a week, one bag may last two weeks. 

The same holds true with my pasta. If you go by the serving size listed on the box, instead of needing two boxes to feed four people, you only need one box to feed four. That’s half the cost in both cases. 

How to Limit Portion Size

The concept of reducing portion sizes is fairly easy. Putting it into practice is where things can get more challenging. Here are some ideas to help get you started.

• Learn how much of the healthiest foods to eat at different calorie levels by following the  NIH Guidelines.
• Weigh and/or measure your food at least in the beginning until you learn what an appropriate portion looks like. 
• Learn what a reasonable serving size looks like without measuring cups or a scale by following the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Serving Size Card.
• Drink water about an hour to half hour before you eat. Water is something that most of us need more of, and it will make you feel more full while you’re eating. 
• Don’t eat from the bag. Set out a serving size or a serving and a half if that seems like a more reasonable amount and put the bag away.
• Eat healthy snacks at regular intervals throughout the day so that you’re not ravenous  when you sit down for a meal. 
• Go by the nutrition labels on packages. 
• If you’re making a recipe from a blog, follow the recommended serving sizes that are usually included. Most blog recipe creators are home cooks. You can normally rely on them to include very reasonable serving sizes as well as the associated nutrition information. 

Bottom Line on Reducing Portion Size

The bottom line on reducing portion size is that we’re not talking about depravation here. We’re talking about eating more intentionally and intuitively as to what your body needs to nourish it. That’s opposed to what your emotions may be making you think they want as well as what may just be habit or conditioned eating. When it comes to portion size, you’re in the driver’s seat, and you’re the one in control. Let that be empowering for you – whatever you decide to eat. 

Sources

1. National Institutes of Health. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/wecan/eat-right/portion-distortion.htm
2. National Institutes of Health. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/wecan/eat-right/distortion.htm
3. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Eat Right. Serving Size vs Portion Size is There a Difference. https://www.eatright.org/food/nutrition/nutrition-facts-and-food-labels/serving-size-vs-portion-size-is-there-a-difference
4. The University of Texas. MD Anderson Cancer Center. What Happens When You Overeat? https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/What-happens-when-you-overeat.h23Z1592202.html
5. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Carbohydrates and Blood Sugar. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/carbohydrates-and-blood-sugar/
6. National Institutes of Health. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Health Risks of Being Overweight. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/health-risks-overweight

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While there are many lessons to learn from our global pandemic, one of the most practical is that we need to restock and maintain our emergency food supply. This is not hoarding, and it’s not stockpiling. This is simply being smart. Clearly, as we’ve all learned, once we’re in the middle of an emergency or someone high up says that one is imminent, it’s often too late to count on getting what we need, let alone finding healthy options at the best possible price. At that point, it’s just grab what you can even if it’s a brand that costs triple what you usually pay.

While none of us want to be caught in that situation again, it’s easy to let our guard down when the supply chain seems as if it has caught up or the emergency is over. That’s why it’s important to remember how the benefits of restocking our emergency food supply far outweigh any negative aspects to keeping extra food around the house. 

Benefits of Restocking Your Emergency Food Supply

The benefits of restocking your emergency food supply before an emergency are many. Here are just a few of them.

1. An emergency can happen at any time. While the pandemic is our most recent painful reminder, it can be weather-related or any other type of natural or man-made disaster.
2. These situations are stressful enough without adding the possibility of being without the food we need to the mix. (Just always remember the sight of the empty shelves for rice, flour, toilet paper and other staples. I don’t know about you, but the mental toll that took on me is not something that I want to repeat if I can at all avoid it.)
3. Doing it ahead of time means that you can stock up on affordable options and take advantage of sales. While stores and suppliers aren’t supposed to price gouge during these times, if there’s a shortage, prices are going to go up or at least not be as affordable as they are at other times. It also gives you options to compare as opposed to having to take whatever brand is available, even if it’s the most expensive. 
4. Items are going to be more accessible during normal times than during an emergency. 
5. You don’t have to rush out when it’s unsafe to do so, and you don’t have to stand in long lines waiting to get in to stores or to check out. 

Items to Include in Emergency Food Supply

The rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you should have two weeks of food on hand for your emergency food supply. While everyone’s needs and wants are different. Here’s a list of the basic items that I believe most of us have found that we need or would want to have to get us by. 

Pantry staples

• Yeast
• Brown rice any other staple grains that you use
• Flour (keeps for 6-8 months in pantry and up to 1 year refrigerated¹)
• Bread flour
• Powdered buttermilk
• Vital wheat gluten (can make bread flour out of it)
• If need gluten-free, make sure that you have all of the flour alternatives that you need
• Dry legumes (less expensive)
• Non-dairy milk alternatives (Non-refrigerated cartons of soy milk, hemp milk, flax milk, rice milk or Cashew milk)
• Sugar or sweetener alternatives 
• Soups and broths
• Flour and/or corn tortillas
• Taco shells
• Seasoning packets (or better yet and much less expensive, the spices on hand to make these yourself)
• Pasta
• Oats
• Comfort foods (anything such as chocolate chips needed for baking favorite treats)
• Healthy snacks (Unpopped popcorn is the best for storing for long periods of time)
• Cocoa
• Peanut butter or nut butter alternatives
• Juice (Including lemon and lime juice)
• Jelly
• Tea
• Coffee
• Olive oil or other cooking oil
• Maple syrup
• Honey
• Condiments (Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, Barbecue sauce, etc.) 
• Canned coconut milk (Trust me. If you don’t use this already, you may find it very useful in an emergency.) 
• Anything needed for a special diet 

Canned Goods

• Vegetables 
• Soups
• Meats such as wild-caught tuna or salmon
• Fruits or jars of fruit
• Pizza or marinara sauce

Refrigerated

These items are good because they will keep for a while. If they’re getting close to going bad, go ahead and use them and then restock with more.

• Non-dairy milk alternatives such as almond milk
• Shredded cheese (mozzarella if making pizza is a thing)
• Eggs (these stay good in the refrigerator for 3-5 weeks¹)
• Butter or butter substitute

Frozen

• Meat
• Frozen vegetables
• Bread to have in freezer 
• Frozen fruit
• Anything needed for a special diet (For example, gluten-free bread to keep in the freezer.)
• Frozen homemade soups

Miscellaneous 

Some of these aren’t food items, but while you’re re-stocking your supply, you know you’re going to need them. 

• Toilet paper
• Clorox wipes 
• Hand sanitizer
• Hand soap
• Cleaning supplies
• Food for infants
• Bottled water (gallons and individual bottles)
• Food storage (plastic or re-usable baggies, plastic wrap, foil)
• Paper towels
• Dishwashing detergent
• Dishwashing liquid
• Masks
• Latex gloves
• Pain reliever

Cooking supplies in case of power outage

• Propane camp stove or gas grill (outdoor use only)
• Extra tanks of propane for gas grill

Helpful Resources

While the focus here is on being prepared for an emergency, be sure and check out my post on Buying Food During a Crisis. The suggestions there may just change the way you think about buying food on a regular basis. To make this process even easier, you can also access my free Food Inventory and Shopping List template here or through the box at the side of your screen. 

In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has more suggestions for emergency preparedness at ready.gov/food and the FoodKeeper App lets you see how long specific foods will last and the best ways to store them. 

Sources

1. FoodKeeper App by Foodsafety.gov. https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep-food-safe/foodkeeper-app

The post Money Saving Tip: Restock Your Emergency Food Supply appeared first on Peppermint Tea.

Let’s be honest, no one likes to eat an even sort of mushy banana. BUT! There’s still so much that you can do with ripe bananas, and it’s a shame to let them go to waste. That’s true from both a food waste and money-saving perspective. By freezing bananas, you can save what you might normally throw away and use another day. 

What to Do with Frozen Bananas

My favorite way of using frozen bananas is to put them in smoothies. In fact, I prefer them in my smoothie. They give it a thicker and creamier consistency, which I love. 

You can also use frozen bananas for baking, and we’re not just talking about banana bread.  You can use them in pancakes, cookies, muffins, cakes and the list goes on. If you’re looking for ideas on how to bake with bananas, Crazy for Crust offers 66 Banana Recipes that give some delicious options. 

Bananas can also be used as a substitute for the following in baking:

• Fats such as butter or oils (I cup of mashed banana for 1 cup of the butter or oil)
• Eggs (1/4 cup of banana puree = 1 egg) ***frozen bananas need to be thawed
• Sugar (1 cup mashed banana = 1 cup sugar) *** frozen bananas need to be thawed

How to Freeze Bananas

Now that we’ve established that freezing bananas is a good thing to do, let’s get to how you do it. Bananas are best to freeze when they’re starting to turn brown and are a little softer but not too mushy. That said, I’ve frozen many a mushy one, and they turned out fine. Remember, the riper the banana, the sweeter it is.  

You have a few choices as to what form you freeze bananas in after you peel them.

Option 1: The whole banana. Good for smoothies. 

Option 2: Cut the banana in half. Good for smoothies. Since I only use half a banana in my smoothies, this is my preferred way to do it. 

Option 3: Cut the banana into slices. Good for baking. 

Freezing the whole banana or halves

1. Peel the banana.

2. Cut if you’re halving and put them into freezer bags.

3. Put the bag of bananas into the freezer. 

Freezing banana slices

1. Peel the banana.

2. Slice bananas so that they’re ¼-inch to ½-inch thick.

3. Lay banana slices flat on a cookie sheet. I usually just put them straight onto the cookie sheet, but if you’d prefer to cover the sheet with parchment paper, that works as well.  

4. Put the baking sheet into the freezer. Two hours is plenty of time for the bananas to become solid. 

5. Put the slices into a freezer bag. 

For both of these methods, it’s best to label your freezer bags with the date. Frozen bananas are best used within 6 months. 

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Avoid grocery shopping hungry. This healthy money saving tip is fairly obvious, but, we sometimes need reminding of the obvious. I know I do. How many times have I gotten to the second store when grocery shopping and realized that I’m suddenly hungry? My last meal was several hours before, and now I’m needing a snack. I convince myself that I can power through this last store and that I will eat one of my delicious crunchy apples when I get home.

Needless to say, the thoughts of the apple become less sustaining as I work my way down the aisles. Before I know it, my cart is filled with far more than what’s on my grocery list – much of which is not healthy in the least. Now I’m not only making poor food choices, I’m going to be paying for my lack of foresight with my wallet and my health. Most people can relate at one time or another, which is why we’re focusing on why we shouldn’t go grocery shopping hungry. 

Grocery Shopping Hungry Costs More

Coming out of the store with more food than we intend when we go grocery shopping hungry makes sense. A 2018 study published in the journal NeuroImage set out to figure out why “The abundant exposure to food cues in our environment is one of the main drivers of overconsumption.” Participants were shown images of low and high calorie food when they hadn’t eaten and were hungry and when they had eaten and weren’t hungry. The study found that hunger induced greater brain activity while looking at images of high calorie foods than looking at the same images when the participants weren’t hungry. While more research needs to be done on how we act on this increased brain activity, the study clearly shows that our brain probably reacts differently when we’re surrounded by high calorie foods when we’re hungry. 

What I’ve found for me is this means that I’ll still put the healthy foods into my basket that I was planning on getting, but if I’m hungry, I’m also going to add in unhealthy, highly-processed, high calorie foods that I wasn’t planning on getting. I can easily add $10-$20 or more to my grocery bill in this way. 

Grocery Shopping Hungry Can Result in Poor Food Choices

The unhealthy, highly-processed, high calorie foods that I buy if I’m grocery shopping hungry are far different than what I would buy otherwise. If I’m hungry, I’ll go for the ready-made simple carbohydrates that will fill me up quickly and that will give me that quick energy boost. We’re talking chips, crackers and sometimes even cookies. In fact, the only time that I give the packages of Fudge Stripes a second glance these days is when I’m grocery shopping hungry. That’s a once beloved food that I no longer even want, except in this case. 

I want something that I can open as soon as I get back in the car, or if I’m really hungry, that I’ll open and eat as I finish my shopping. Very rarely do I rip open the bag of baby carrots and munch my way through the store if I’m hungry. 

Tips for Avoiding Grocery Shopping Hungry

So how can we avoid grocery shopping hungry? Here are some tips based on what I’ve found that works. 

1. If you have multiple stops to make, take a snack with you. This could be a piece of fruit, some cut up vegetables or even a healthy-ish muffin. This way, you can sit in the car between stops and snack before you head in to the next store. If you know that you tend to get hungry at some point while you’re shopping, it’s important that you eat your snack whether you’re hungry or not. Going ahead and eating it will help prevent you from getting hungry. If you wait until you are hungry, it may be too late. What you brought may not seem appealing. 
2. Eat a snack or meal at home before you shop. This means within 15-30 minutes of walking out the door. That way, you can make it through 2-3 stops at different stores.
3. Take a water bottle with you to shop. Drinking water helps you to feel more full. If you sip on it as you’re going through the store, you can more easily keep your stomach and your brain satisfied. That will help you to pass by what might otherwise be tempting unhealthy choices. 

Being aware of the budgetary and health impacts of grocery shopping hungry can go a long way to making sure that you get in and out with the healthy foods that you had planned on and that there’s not a lot of unhealthy impulse buying along the way. 

Lean on Your Community

Do you have any other tricks for not grocery shopping hungry? If so, please share them in the comments below. 

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We’re taking it old school for this one, but if you’re looking for a healthy way to save money, use your library card! Depending on your habits, you could save between at least a few dollars each month and hundreds of dollars every year. It is one of the easiest ways to save money, and it doesn’t cost a thing (as long as you remember to return your materials on time). Even during our current crisis, most libraries are offering options to get a temporary card online that will let you have access to ebooks, eaudiobooks and other materials. Here’s a look at how using your library card can save you money every month.

1. Free Access to Books When You Use Your Library Card 

When it comes to books – whether they’re physical, ebooks or eaudiobooks – there’s no more affordable option than using your library card to check them out from your public library. 

• Most libraries are very good about staying up to date with at least many of the latest reads. While you may have to wait on a waiting list for bestsellers, as long as you can be patient, the book will get to you eventually. 
• Checking a book out from the library is a good way to try it on for size before you buy it. If you read it and think that it’s something that you’ll want to keep coming back to, then you’ll know it’s worth the investment. 
• If you’re wanting to dive into a topic by reading everything you can about it, checking out books is by far your best bet. Whether it’s cooking, decorating, gardening or self-improvement, you can gain vast amounts of knowledge for free. 
• If you like to have your books in a digital format, most libraries are part of a network that lets you download them as an MP3 for eaudiobooks, and/or they’re available as ebooks. (Potential savings of $9.99-$14.95/month) To access, click on “browse digital collection” if that is available. 

2. Magazines

Unless you’re someone who likes to look through a magazine over and over again, accessing your library’s digital collection simply makes sense. The latest issues are available for most of the popular subscriptions. (Potential savings of $1-$5/month) To access, click on “browse digital collection” if that is available. 

3. Newspapers 

Your local newspaper plus probably the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times should be available through your library’s digital collection. Your local newspaper may only offer an abbreviated version of the content, but it should hit the main stories of the day. The only hitch that I’ve found with my local newspaper is that it doesn’t include the current day’s paper. It only goes through the previous day. (Potential savings of $5-$18/month) To access, click on “browse digital collection” if that is available. 

4. Movies and Music

Movies and music are usually available through DVDs and CDs at your physical library, but in most cases, you have access to at least some online as well. (Potential savings of $1-$9.99 or more/month) To access, click on “browse digital collection” if that is available. 

5. Online learning courses or software

Most libraries offer access to at least some type of online learning resource. These can range anywhere from software that lets you learn a new language to The Great Courses,  which lets you learn just about anything. (Potential savings of $10/month to $350 for one course) To access, click on “browse digital collection” if that is available. 

Not every library offers the same resources, so be sure and check out your library’s website to get a full picture of what is available. Then get your library card if you haven’t already and start saving money!

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Most Common Types of Beans and Legumes 

Some of the most common types of beans and other legumes include the following:

• Adzuki
• Cannellini
• Great Northern
• Kidney
• Lima
• Navy
• Pinto
• Soy
• Black-eyed peas
• Chickpeas
• Lentils
• Peanuts

Cost Benefit of Cooking Dry Beans

There is no doubt that cooking dry beans is much more cost-effective than buying them canned. 

For comparison, a 14.5 oz can of conventionally grown beans usually costs between $.69-$.99. One pound of dry beans usually costs around $1.29. 

Organic beans can cost anywhere from $.99 to $1.20 for canned beans and about $2.99 for one pound of dry organic beans. 

One can of beans provides about 3.5 ½ cup servings and one pound of dry beans provides about 12.5 ½ cup servings. That means that the conventionally grown canned beans cost about $.20 – $.28 per serving compared to about $.12 per serving for dry beans. 

Organic beans cost between $.28 – $.32 per serving for canned beans and about $.24 per serving for dry beans. 

Clearly, the biggest price difference between dry and canned beans comes with traditionally grown beans. That raises the question of whether there’s truly a need to pay the extra cost for organic. In it’s 2020 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce¹, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) cites a Harvard University list² based on USDA test data and other methods. The list classifies produce as being high or low in pesticides. That list includes beans and lentils as having a low to moderate pesticide residue score, which means that if you’re making choices based on cost, it may not be worth the extra price to buy organic. If you buy chickpeas though, you’ll probably want to stick with organic. The EWG does say that they contain high levels of glyphosate or Roundup¹. 

Methods for Cooking Dry Beans

While cooking dry beans does take some planning ahead of time, the hands-on time is very minimal. I consider Linda Watson to be the queen of cooking dry beans. She says in her Wildly Affordable Organic (Affiliate Link) cookbook that split peas, lentils, black-eyed peas, black beans, chickpeas and pinto beans are fine to cook without pre-soaking. Kidney beans should always be pre-soaked for at least 5 hours. 

I follow her quick-soak method of doing them in a slow cooker. That involves bringing 6 cups of water for one pound of beans to a boil, then adding it to the beans in the slow cooker. Add salt if you’re using and let the beans cook on high. Split peas, lentils and black-eyed peas take about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Black beans, chickpeas and pinto beans take about 3.5 hours. 

Linda also gives other methods of cooking beans, so if you’re new to this, I strongly recommend reading her entire section on the topic as well as trying any of the bean recipes listed in her book. 

Once the beans are completely cool, I save out what I’ll need for the week and freeze the rest in baggies by 14 oz amounts. The next time you need beans, all you have to do is thaw them. I do strongly recommend thawing by letting them sit in water for a couple of hours. In my experience, doing it in the microwave causes them to be mushy. 

By cooking dry beans in this way, my time and monetary investments are minimal for being able to enjoy some of the healthiest foods available. 

Lean on Your Community

Do you cook dry beans? If so, let us know in the comments below what your favorite method is. 

Sources

1. Environmental Working Group. 2020 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticide in Produce. https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php
2. Chiu, Y.H., et al., Association Between Pesticide Residue Intake from Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables and Pregnancy Outcomes Among Women Undergoing Infertility Treatment With Assistance Reproductive Technology. JAMA Internal Medicine, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/amainternmed.2017.5038. Available at: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2659557

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Most Common Types of Herbs Used in the Kitchen

Some of the most common types of herbs used in cooking include the following:

• Basil
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Mint
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Sage
• Chives
• Dill
• Oregano

Fortunately, growing all of these herbs at home is very easy to do. 

Growing Herbs

Growing herbs can be done inside, outside, in containers or in the ground. It mainly depends on the amount that you need and the space that you have available to you. If you decide to grow them anywhere but in the ground, you’ll also want to make sure that they’re in a nice sunny spot. Some types actually do fine in partial or indirect sunlight, so these are the best for growing indoors or as I do, on my screened-in porch. 

From a cost benefit perspective, it’s important to know that some herbs are perennials² and will come back each year. These include Chives, Mint, Oregano, Rosemary, Sage and Thyme. Keep them alive and your one-time cash outlay will definitely give you a fantastic return on investment. 

Financial Benefits of Growing Herbs

If you buy fresh organic herbs in the grocery store, they can cost anywhere from $1.50-$5 for a bunch or a package, depending on the type that you’re buying. That’s for one bunch, that unless you’ve planned a couple of recipes for the week around that herb, you may or may not use all of it. 

Growing herbs is such a money-saver because a packet of organic seeds can cost anywhere from $3.25 – $10 for a pack. Most are on the lower end and usually come in packs of 500-700 seeds. 

The best part – if you don’t use all of them, you can store them, and they’ll stay viable for 1-5 years. Johnny’s Selected Seeds recommends that you store them in a sealed jar in the refrigerator. You can check out the company’s chart for average storage life for specific types of seeds here.

This type of storage life means that even if you’re using annuals, you can probably get at least two years of plantings, if not more, out of one packet of seeds. 

If you decide to use starter plants for herbs, the cost for a season or year’s worth of herbs is equivalent to buying 2-3 bunches in the grocery store. When I’ve bought them as starter plants, I’ve paid $3-$4 for each plant. 

You can also dry your herbs or store them in other ways so that they last anywhere from 3 months to a year or more. Here are a couple of great resources for that:

• Iowa State University Extension and Outreach
• Adams Fairacre Farms

Resources for Growing Herbs

The following are resources for organic herb seeds that I would highly recommend. 

• Seeds of Change
• Seed Savers
• Grow Organic
• Burpee
• Johnny’s Selected Seeds
• Etsy – Yes, Etsy. Just go to their main website and search for organic herb seeds. 

Growing herbs does require the upfront cost of investing in some pots or other types of containers and potting soil if you’re growing them inside or on a porch, but those costs are quickly recouped if you cook with herbs often. The ability to only cut as much as you need when you need it and to dry or otherwise store what you don’t use makes this an easy money saving strategy in my book. 

Sources

1. T Alan Jiang, Health Benefits of Culinary Herbs and Spices, Journal of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, Volume 102, Issue 2, 1 March 2019, Pages 395–411, https://doi.org/10.5740/jaoacint.18-0418
2. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach; https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/2008/aug/060101.htm

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One thing that many of us are learning firsthand these days is that buying food during a crisis can be more than a little complicated. Grocery shopping for healthy food on a budget is what I do, but if you’re like me and don’t usually keep a lot of extra food in the house, it’s clear that a different approach is needed.

To help with that, I went to a couple of experts and called on tactics that I’ve used in the past but had let go of along the way. Between us all, some pretty sound strategies emerged for buying food during a crisis that I have now implemented. I wanted to share them with you because they’ve already started making a difference for my family in keeping us as healthy as possible while lowering costs and stress.

Please Note: I earn from qualifying purchases made through some of the links included in this post. You can read my disclosure policy here.

Take an Inventory of What You Have

At this point, your pantry and freezer may be fairly full of certain types of food, but do you really know what you have? If your answer is anything less than a resounding “yes!” you need to take inventory. It’s one of the crucial first steps to buying food during a crisis.

Inventory Process

My husband and I did this recently, and it was eye-opening to say the least. We went through the pantry, the fridge, the freezer, the cleaning products and regularly-used household items (such as light bulbs). Literally everything in those categories was listed. How many of each item and whether we would need more to get us through the next month. This was definitely a helpful exercise because we found things that we forgot we had, and I realized that we had less of some things than I thought.

If you don’t have a spouse or partner to help, enlist an older child or send your starter list to a neighbor or friend. They can be on speaker phone calling things out to you. The whole process could take take several hours, but I guarantee it will be well worth it. See below in the resources section to access the free Food Inventory and Shopping List Template that we came up with.

Plan 30 Basic Dinners for the Next Month

This idea came from Elise New over at The Frugal Farm Wife. Because Elise lives on a farm, going to the grocery store many times a week isn’t convenient for her family. She’s such a great resource because her family already implements many strategies that would help during a crisis. She says that she likes to have a big list on hand of 30 potential dinners for the month. That way, she can stock those ingredients, draw from that list for her weekly meal plan, and it doesn’t take a lot of time or brain power.

Since you may have random ingredients around that you found during your inventory, this is also a chance to think about how you can incorporate what you already have into meals for the next month. Let’s face it, in preparing for our current situation, most of us have already spent much more than we usually do on groceries. Now, it’s time to pull it all together so that we can actually use what we have and not have to spend as much for a while. Since we’re now thinking in terms of meal planning for a month or at least two to three weeks instead of a week at a time, it’s okay to start using what we have on hand.

Registered Dietician Kim Barrier says that for some of her dinner options, she’s trying to double the recipes or choose dishes that make many servings so that there are leftovers to reheat for lunches. That’s important when planning out food for the next month – remember to include breakfasts, lunches and snacks as well as dinners.

Do One Larger Shopping Trip for the Month

This will include stocking up as much as possible on the food you’ll need for your meals, as well as any household or cleaning items that you’ll need for the month. When buying food during a crisis, it’s fine to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but you’re just not going to be able to rely on them as much as you may normally. Buying more storable foods is going to be the way to go. That includes beans, nut butters or sunflower seed butter, brown rice, whole wheat and bean pastas, oats, nuts and seeds.

Keep Canned and Frozen Vegetables and Meat on Hand

Kim Barrier and Elise New both suggest keeping a good supply of canned tomatoes and frozen vegetables on hand as well. Kim reminds us that frozen and canned vegetables are just as nutritious if not more so in some situations than fresh. Fresh fruits and vegetables start losing some of their nutrients once picked, so the longer they’re in transport to the grocery and/or sit in the produce section the more they lose. Kim says that “frozen fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are picked at peak season and immediately processed, which locks in the nutrients.” 

Canned vegetables are also picked at peak season and canned. “If you were to compare the amount of nutrients you would get from fresh, frozen or canned foods you would find the difference is only a matter of a few percentage points for most nutrients.” In fact, Kim adds, “Some things even increase with canning. For example, lycopene, the phytonutrient found in tomatoes that might help prevent some cancers, is only released when the tomatoes are cooked.”

Elise urges everyone not to forget about freezing meat or buying meat that’s already frozen, which is often cheaper than buying fresh. While you don’t want to hoard more than your family is going to eat in a month, buying meat and freezing it lets you take advantage of sales that are still going on. Elise says that holds true for other items on a whole foods diet as well. Vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, garlic and onions store well for a while and make a good base for a number of soups, stews, casseroles and other dishes. So, if you find these items and they’re on sale, stock up. 

Do Smaller Shopping Trips Once Every 1-2 Weeks When Buying Food During a Crisis

The main goal with buying food during a crisis (or any time for that matter) is to reduce your shopping trips to once every 1-2 weeks. This will reduce the stress of feeling like you should constantly be looking for food, and it will ease the strain on your pocketbook since every time you go in the store, you’ll usually pick up more than what you went in for. Since you will have done the bulk of your shopping in your larger trip, this trip is just to get any milk or fresh foods that you can’t do without.

Money-Saving Tip

To save money, Elise suggests keeping an eye out for produce that has been taken out of the regular displays and marked down because it’s about to go bad. If you also notice employees removing produce from the displays, ask them what they’re going to do with it or if you can just have it. Many stores are happy to deeply discount or giveaway food that they were going to have to throw out anyway. You won’t know unless you ask.

During regular times, Elise recommends getting to know your stores and when they tend to have sales and mark down produce and meat on a regular basis. While many of the stores still honor their sales during a crisis, stocking routines and procedures are probably different than they usually are so this may be difficult to do until things get back to normal.

Online Shopping and Curbside Delivery

Elise is a strong believer in online shopping and curbside delivery with your grocery store because it limits everyone’s exposure to germs. I highly recommend that before you sign up and pay the initial fee for one of these services, be sure to call the store and find out if pickups will be able to start immediately or if there’s a delay because of the current situation. If there is, you may still want to try it anyway, but it’s important to know what you can and cannot count on before you sign up.

More of Elise’s Tips for Buying Food During a Crisis

• Learn how to use what’s left in the produce section or on the shelves. This will help you to stick with your one large and limited smaller shopping trips a month. If you’re looking for canned beans and you can only find dry, learn how to cook dry beans.
• Look outside the grocery store. Take eggs for example – if egg prices at the store are getting high, check with your local farmers. Chances are that if you buy eggs from pasture-raised chickens, you’ll probably get the eggs from the farmer cheaper than you will from the store.
• Keep looking at weekly sales flyers because many stores still honor them for the items that they have in stock.
• Use your planned meals as a guide but be flexible in the way that you fix them if an ingredient isn’t available or if something comparable is on sale. If a recipe calls for zucchini, can yellow squash be substituted instead?
• Make your own condiments. It’s almost always cheaper to buy the ingredients to make healthier versions of condiments than it is to buy them.

** My note based on my experience and discussion with Elise – Make desserts and “treat” foods from scratch as much as possible. Doing this limits the amount in the house at any one time, and it’s also a lot less expensive!

Resources

• Elise’s Grocery Budget Mastery (affiliate link) is a fantastic resource that walks you through the six essential steps to slashing your grocery budget. It’s served as a valuable reminder of some of the strategies I used to use but let go along the way. I’m definitely using it to tweak some of the less than ideal habits we’ve gotten into.
• Feel free to access my free Food Inventory and Shopping List template here or through the box at the side of your screen. My husband made the first version of this as a standard spreadsheet years ago, but I’ve found that it’s more useful as a Google sheet so that it’s a live document that I can easily access while I’m shopping.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Choose My Plate program’s resource for food planning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Lean on Your Community

If you try any or all of these steps, feel free to let us know how it’s working for you in the comments below. Also, if you have other strategies that you’re trying, let us know that as well. Whether we’re veteran frugal meal planners or fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants food buyers, we all have something to learn from each other.

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Perform Daily Financial Fitness Checks

I want to be clear here. I am not talking about checking your stock portfolio, your retirement plan or your child’s college savings plan daily. That is a migraine waiting to happen at this point in time. What I’m talking about is your personal budget. If you don’t have one, I strongly encourage you to use any extra time you may have these days to develop one. Feel free to check out my tips and suggested resources for doing that here.

As an experienced budget maker and follower, I know all too well the benefits of having a spending and savings plan at any time, let alone when there’s a major crisis and it’s easy to think that the sky is falling. Having a budget and checking in on it daily actually helps to put you in the driver’s seat and lets you have at least some control over what is happening to you personally. Unlike with our retirement plans or stock portfolios, ignorance is not bliss when it comes to the amount of money we have at our disposal right now.

Daily Financial Fitness Checks Encourage an Attitude of Abundance

The key is looking at personal budgets through a lens of abundance and not lack. A budget helps to support your dreams and your reality. Knowing where you stand financially on a daily basis helps things not to seem as bleak as your imagination may be telling you they are. Or, it may provide a much-needed wake-up call about how you’re choosing to spend your money and whether your choices are really a good idea at this time.

For example, can you really afford to keep going through a month’s worth of stockpiled snacks in one week just because they’re there? Or is it better to exercise some discipline and put the extras out of sight so that you’re not tempted to go through $50 worth of snacks every week when that may be your snack budget for the entire month? Think about what will serve your goals and your immediate needs best. If you’re not checking in on your finances daily, those extra purchases may not seem like such a big deal in the moment. But if you’re keeping an eye on the big picture, they may mean the difference between being able to afford the basic healthy food you’ll need later on or being able to do something fun that you had been wanting to do when this is all over.

5 Minutes a Day is All You Need

I’m not talking about investing hours a day on this. I’m talking about investing 5 minutes a day while you’re having your morning coffee or tea. Whether you’re using an online tool (see below for some suggestions) or a spreadsheet, here’s what I recommend that you do with this time.

• Make sure that you have an accurate record of how much is in your bank account (we used to call this balancing our checkbook).
• Record any expenses or deposits from the day before in your budgeting tool (this includes from your bank account and any credit card activity because it will impact what you owe later in the month or the following month).
• Scan over your budget to make sure everything looks like it’s on track with where you want to be. If it doesn’t, briefly consider where you need to make changes (starting with that day), to get you back on track.

These are challenging times. While we don’t know exactly what the full impact will be on us financially, the one thing we can control is how we manage our personal finances. Daily financial fitness now will hopefully help to prevent too much stress in this moment as well as further financial hardship down the road. And that will be good for every aspect of our lives – including our overall health and wellbeing.

Recommended Online Budgeting Tools

• Quicken Home & Business
• Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar Budget Tool
• Mint
• You Need a Budget

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