With Hannukah already here and Christmas just about, it’s worth looking at this grocery shopping psychology study on “cabinet castaways.” The study, an oldie but a goodie, found that 63% of unused products were bought for specific purposes:
When people buy products for specific recipes or specific occasions, they tend to be overly optimistic…After buying the product, people lack the time to prepare the recipe or they overestimate the amount of people at their party; leaving the occasion-specific product unused…
So what can you do? Don’t overestimate your guests. I know, I know–easier said than done, because you are fighting the “good provider” impulse. But here are three ideas:
1. Recognize that it’s not the worst thing in the world to run out of something.
2. Use e-vites or actual paper invitations with RSVPs (now that’s old school!)
3. You can always have reserves on hand, not open the packages and return them if they go unused.
Also, it may be wise to minimize those holiday food impulse buys, like candy cane oatmeal and egg nog pizza.*
* These products may or may not exist…but you get the picture.
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On a separate note: donations to food banks around the country are down and demand is up. If you can, please give what you can–food, money or time.
Comments
4 responses to “Holiday Planning”
One thing we try to do, in the winter time when there’s no fresh CSA produce, is to have one night a week when we use up something from the pantry or freezer that we have had for a while.
For instance, about a year ago I optimistically bought a *very* large bag of frozen vegetables at Costco. They weren’t very good in stir fry, which was the purpose I bought them for. So they’ve been in the freezer an awfully long time.
This week, we made broccoli-cauliflower-cheese soup with some of them It took some extra salt and cheese to cover up the not-so-greatness of the veggies, but now I have that freezer space, and we didn’t waste them.
Right now is an excellent time to unload homemade stuff you didn’t like much, too. I used extra-hot cayenne in my dilly beans this year, and my toddler won’t eat them, so we gave several jars away as special homemade Christmas presents.
Oh, the guilt. I have two cans of pumpkin in my pantry and I can’t even remember why I bought them. And it is true, I would’ve bought them with a specific recipe in mind…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28366872/?GT1=43001
Must be the season. Even governments are getting in on destroying “pantry” surplus. France is electing to destroy rather than distribute 10 tons of chocolate that might make a holiday bright for someone.
It’s almost as bad as most government policies that requires destroying seized counterfeit clothing goods instead of dropping them in areas of the world that have nothing to wear.
I just found your blog and I can’t stop going through the archives! I know this is a fairly old post so forgive me if it’s been said already somewhere – when I worked at a supercenter in customer service, any returned food had to be marked defective for fear of tampering and improper storage. It irritated me so much to do it, but it was required. One customer brought back a cart full of food that she had obviously gotten from a food bank and management made me take it, although we could only do an exchange. After telling the customer how much credit she would have, she went over the amount and decided against getting frozen and fresh meat. That also cannot be restocked once it’s been in a cart because of spoilage concerns. All told, we had to destroy about $100 worth of food.
Sorry for the long post…I’m just happy to know there are others out there that are bothered by this kind of thing!
Thanks for the inspiration to be more aware and proactive!