Shopping to avoid waste can require a time investment at first. Ask yourself what you have the most of—time or money? If your answer is time, it might be worth investing that time in some good meal planning and grocery shopping.

Keep in mind as you plan your meals that the longer period of time you try to plan for, the less accurate you will be. It might be a good idea to try shopping every two or three days to begin with to make sure that you are only buying as much as you will use. The more practiced you are, the longer you will be able to plan for without throwing food away.

As you plan your meals, take into consideration how much time you will need to prepare your meals. Don’t plan meals that take an hour to prepare for a night on which you only have half an hour to make dinner because of other time commitments you have made. This is often a reason that food goes to waste. Because time is short, you may end up ordering fast food or take out and the food you thought you were going to cook goes to waste.

Each time you prepare your grocery list, take an inventory of what food is left from the last time you shopped. What did you buy too much of? What did you buy that no one wanted to eat? Each week you will be able to fine tune your plans until you reduce the amount of waste to a minimum. As leftovers accumulate, have a leftovers night periodically in which you make a meal out of your leftovers. See how creative you can be.

When storing leftovers in the refrigerator, mark the date you store them with a permanent marker on tape on the package. Keep a marker and tape near the fridge to make it easy to do. Glass containers make great storage containers because it’s easy to see the contents and they are easy to clean and reuse. Check out your refrigerator every day to make sure you don’t have food that will soon be outdated. If you do, make sure you include it in your next meal so it doesn’t go to waste.

Do the same with the food in your cupboards. Check the expiration date on the packaged and canned foods you have so you can be sure to use them before they expire also. You can also take a week or other period of time now and then in which you don’t purchase any additional food until you’ve used all the food on hand. Instead of running to the store when you run out of something, force yourself to use what is left. This not only ensures nothing goes to waste, but it also makes sure that you completely rotate your food regularly.

Fresh fruits and vegetables make up a significant amount of the food that gets thrown away. People buy them in the belief that they want to eat healthy meals, but end up throwing them away because they don’t have time to prepare them. If you find that you’re still throwing food away, try buying food that’s frozen instead of fresh food. That way you will be able to keep food longer.

You can also try to buy fresh fruits and vegetables that keep longer. Apples, oranges, carrots, squash, potatoes, and onions are all fresh foods that will store for longer than some other foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables are richer in nutrients so it is best to include them in your meal planning as much as you can. The longer food sits in your refrigerator, the more vitamins and minerals it loses, so if you have the time to shop every few days, your food will stay fresher.