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Compare the size of our rubbish bins to out parents & grand parents. Now we have a huge dedicated bin for recycling and another for general waste.
Why do we need so much more space for rubbish, well buying more stuff, especially packaged food will quickly put your garbage bin under pressure.
Sixty years ago we made everything, all our meals were cook at home or we prepared our lunches for work/office.
A modern supermarket may stock 20 000 to 30 000 different items.

Prior to the fifties, Supermarkets didn’t exist, we went to a number of speciality shops for our food supplies: the Grocer for packaged, dry or canned foods, Green Grocer for fruit & vegetables, Baker, Butcher, Milk Bar/confectionery shop.

Yet we managed fine making our own cookies and other treats, jams and break fast cereal was porridge, toast, fruit or the good old bacon & eggs (Ok if you;re doing manual labour), lunch was sandwiches, fruit and dinner made from scratch.
We had our milk home delivered with a trip to the local Milk Bar satisfying our basic requirements of flour, sugar, bread etc.

Somewhere along the way our basic range of products exploded, have a look at the pasta source aisle, how many products are there?
Making a great pasta source is pretty simple, why pay for a processed product with preservatives, chemicals & artificial flavors when there are simplier alternatives?

The main point is all these products have packaging and can be made at home but “I don’t have the time”.
Well maybe ask yourself what you are doing with the other 8 hours you are not working or sleeping.
Yes modern life is crazy yet we can make some decisions about how we manage all our activities.

Just like dining at a restaurant, adopt similar rules:
1.You cannot leave the table until everyone have finished
2.Excuse yourself when leaving the table
3.No home style habits, cleaning ears with anything on table, licking the plate clean, slurping soup, lifting the soup bowl to your mouth to get the last 50ml os soup, passing wind, burping, shouting, screaming, arguing, slotching with elbows on table, falling a sleep etc…
4.Serve up some nice bread, ciabatta, sour dough with some nice olive oil
5.Keep the portion sizes small, if your using the large restaurant style plates, the food should occupy no more than 25% of the surface area, you won’t starve.
6.No competitive style eating, chew your food slowly and savour the flavour
7.TV switched off, computer switched off
8.Engage in conversation, talk about all these silly rules, how your day was etc

Quite often we buy additional food on an almost daily basis. Our quest to cook something ends up in the supermarket aisle with the “must have just in case” acquisitions filling up our pantries, be it frozen vegies or tins of food. We venture home like little squirrels, adding more stuff into food storage.

Why not do something crazy and trawl through your fridge/freezer or pantry, you will be surprised what can be accomplished witha little imagination, tins of tuna, packets of pasta, frozen vegies are at the ready for some make shift food.
Best of all it enables you to use the food that is being stock plied by inactivity, otherwise all this great food goes to waste and ends up in rubbish bin.

A great way to bulk buy foods in season and to store them for future use is preserving.
Our grandparents performed this lost art form, often growing their own fruit & vegetables & creating jams, chutneys, sauces and preserved fruits from the abundance of excess fruits & vegetables.

Often families would get together for the annual tomato sauce day where a dozen crates of fresh tomatoes are pulverised to create a 12 months supply of tomato sauce.
Not only is it fun but a great way of bringing the family together with a good old fashioned lunch to help get through the day of saucing.
Similarly I remember my grandmother making fantastic chutneys and preserved apricots and plums from the lovely old trees in her garden.

Test out your containers today, place a freshly cut avocado in the container, if you get a few days before it goes brown it’s good, a week is better.
Apart from keeping the moths from eating your food and creating baby moth maggots, you can sore left overs or bulk cook your meals to reduce your trips to the market/supermarket (saving on fuel costs as well).