Your refrigerator is full of wilted lettuce, rotten tomatoes, and ripe-smelling fish. In your pantry are three bags of ancient flour, a packet of six-week-old cookies, and several half-eaten bags of potato chips. There are weevils in your cereal, and ants in your sugar! What a terrible waste of food, not to mention money, and it is not hygienic either.

It is entirely possible that none of this is your fault. You could just be a victim of poor kitchen organization. If your kitchen is not properly organized you could easily be wasting hundreds of dollars worth of food every single year, not to mention the possibility of harboring pests and bacteria in the very place where you cook and your family eats.

So how can organizing your kitchen save you so much money? There are several ways, mostly centering on the problem of food wastage due to various reasons. Keeping an orderly kitchen has many other benefits as well.

Fresh Foods

The most obvious problem is simply that poor organization leads to food wastage because the food you buy isn't stored to preserve its freshness. Fresh vegetables and fruit, if not properly stored, are particularly vulnerable to spoilage. Anything in your pantry is vulnerable to pests if not stored in an air-tight container. Cookies become stale, flour can become infested with insects, and all of your beautiful produce can quickly over-ripen, wilt, or rot if not properly stored. This is to say nothing of the problem of spillage. Open bags in the pantry can easily be knocked over and spilled, leading to yet more wastage.

There is also the problem of knowing what is in your kitchen. If your kitchen is not well-organized, you might very well have the afore-mentioned three bags of flour and six-week-old cookies, and not even know it! Without proper organization, it's simply impossible to know what food you have at any given time. So you take a quick look in the pantry. Try not to notice that you have already got bags of flour hiding in a dark corner, and put flour on your shopping list. So there is yet another bag you will use half of and then forget about!

Fortunately, it is easy to eliminate all of these problems by using clear, accurately labeled storage containers. Choose sturdy air-tight plastic or glass containers, to prevent entry of pests, and to make sure the food you are storing stays fresher for longer. Make sure everything you store is labeled with the name of the item, and the date you bought it. That way, you will always know exactly what is in all of your storage containers, and you will also know how fresh it is.

Frozen Foods

Proper organization in the freezer is equally important, especially if you are the kind of person who prefers to buy in bulk when meats are on sale. If you have bought several pounds of ground beef, for example, you will need to know, when you use it in the future, when it was frozen, so that you know how long you have the use the meat before you risk spoilage.

Everything stored in the freezer should, ideally, be stored in an air-tight bag or container, and should also have the date the item was stored clearly written on the side. As with your fresh foods, this is important for freezer storage both so that you know what you have stored, and also so that you know for how long it will remain fresh.

Cooking in the Kitchen

Food wastage is not the only issue of course. How many times have you "lost" an important cooking implement, and bought another one, only to find that implement stuck behind the fridge or lodged between the wall and the cupboard? Proper storage of all of your cooking tools would save you from these problems and save you money, too!

There is another way of saving money which simply does not occur to most people. How many times have you come home to a messy, disorganized kitchen and decided to order in pizza or Chinese food instead of cooking? An organized, well-kept kitchen is a joy to cook in, and if you make the effort to stay organized in the kitchen, you will be far more likely to want to cook food at home, instead of ordering in or going out to eat.

There are many reasons to keep your kitchen properly organized and clean. Hygiene aside, the problem of food wastage is easily the best reason to put some time and effort into getting your kitchen properly organized with some space-saving containers and other tools which will keep your food fresh, pest-free, and tasting great for longer, and save you money into the bargain!