Everyone is tremendously preparing to buy food supplies to ensure that there is enough food for every family member at home. This is likely due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Some may buy groceries for a weekly portion and some may even get ready for a monthly stock from offline and online stores. No worries everyone! Here are a few tricks that we can apply in order to save more every time we decided to get groceries for our family.

1.  Plan your food shopping

We need to plan our food shopping wisely. This is to ensure that we will not end up splurging on foodstuffs or forget on the items that we really need to buy or we’re supposed to buy. For instance, we can plan to do a big shop weekly or once for every two weeks. In fact, only one family member is allowed to go out for groceries at the moment amidst the Movement Control Order (MCO).

2. Check what you already have in the cupboard or fridge

We should carefully check the food items that we recently have in the cupboard or fridge. Furthermore, do throw away any expired items so that we are able to take a new stock and free up space. This helps us to abstain ourselves from overstocking and surely, we don’t want to pile up many things in our fridge or cupboard.

3. Plan out and decide your weekly menu       

Since now that all of us are required to remain indoors, home cooking is one of the ways to save money apart from ordering food online or using food delivery. A simple home cooking or quick and easy menus can always keep our stomach happy and healthy, unless we have food cravings for certain meals. On the other hand, another trick is that we can also save the leftover food by turning them into a new meal. For example, we can turn the leftover rice into a scrumptious fried rice and overripe bananas into delicious banana pancakes! Planning and deciding about our weekly menu will guide us to save a few number of items that we need to purchase during grocery or food shopping.

4. Make a grocery list

We just have to list out the food items that we need to buy on a piece of paper or using note/note-taking app. Everyone has different ways of making his/her grocery list. Some people may just jot down the items on their palm. Listing items is better than doing food shopping without knowing what to buy and definitely this will save our time! We will not feel clueless the minute we arrive at the supermarket and this trick can curb ourselves from browsing for a long time, looking for items via online stores.

5. Don’t overstock

Try not to buy foods in large quantities and there is no need to do a panic buying for Coronavirus. There are ample food supplies throughout the MCO period. We just need to remember that not all types of food will last longer.

6.  Check the expiry date

It is crucial to check the expiry date on packaging before buying any food products. Don’t feel tempted with the discounted price that the store offers once in a while. This is because some supermarkets may want to finish up their stocks and perhaps the items are soon to be expired. Actually, checking the expiry date is quite easy so that in the end of the day, we won’t feel regret after buying things that are already expired.

7. Pick new and good-looking food items

Every time we buy groceries at the store, do look for fresh and good-looking ones. For instance, do buy any kinds of foods with proper packaging, and when buying fresh fish, look for moist and shiny skin and clear, bright eyes. With this trick, we can have more time to preserve, cook and eat the food, especially fresh foods.

8. Store food properly

Different food types have different storage methods. Storing methods such as canning, freezing and storing in food containers are some of the cost-effective ways to preserve the quality of food at home. There are many benefits that we can gain when we store our foods appropriately. For example, vegetables and fruits will stay fresh longer and we can also lessen food waste. This is better for the environment and saves us a lot of money too. Nevertheless, we need to bear in mind that we can’t store fresh produce closely together as it will cause things around them to spoil and ripe faster. In other words, we need to store each food item in the correct conditions.

9. Consider online shopping

With our personal computer and mobile device, we are able to access to online stores to purchase anything that we need at any convenient time. Indeed, this saves our energy and time as we can shop at myriad stores in different locations and we also can save money on transportation expenses as well. Moreover, some offline stores now limit the number of shoppers/customers at one time, and even allocate a specific duration for every customer to buy groceries at their stores. It’s all because of the Coronavirus cases have hit more than 1 million worldwide and our country, Malaysia is currently under the MCO period. However, if we consider to choose online shopping, we won’t have to confront the long queues and crowded stores. Don’t forget, we will still be able to get awesome discounts and opportunities to save money too through online shopping.