RV Living on a Budget: Zero Waste Meal Planning (ZWMP)

If you are on a journey to decrease your grocery bill and free up food storage space, you need Zero Waste Meal Planning (ZWMP) in your life, and I am here to introduce you to this new concept.

I really feel compelled to share all of this with you as it may be the difference between a family spending $200 a week on groceries and $100 a week on groceries.

I know because that is exactly what my family did.

My family cut our grocery bill IN HALF using this method.

If that does not compel you to want to learn this method, then I do not know what will.

But if you do want to know the basics of what ZWMP is, how it saves you money, and why it is essential to the RV lifestyle then stay tuned, because I am here to help you through it.

What is Zero Waste Meal Planning (ZWMP)? How do I do it?

Zero Waste Meal Planning (ZWMP) takes normal meal planning to a new level. It is meal planning in a way that uses up as many of the ingredients you have on hand as possible. It eliminates a buildup of food stored in your cabinets that never gets used, which allows you to zero out food waste.

To do ZWMP follow these 3 simple steps:

1. Determine your meal planning time frame.

I meal plan for a week at a time. We get paid every single week, so that is what I budget for. I also find that if I try and meal plan for a longer time frame, I go off course. It happens every single time. We will end up with leftovers. We will have extra ingredients that may not survive for more than 1 week. I may decide halfway through the meal plan I want to do something else. It does not matter the reason behind it, I can just never stick to a meal plan for longer than a week at a time.

2. Inventory your ingredients.

This is where ZWMP differs from other meal planning tactics. You will begin your meal planning for the week by looking at what you have at home instead of what is on sale for the week. I mean it, do not look at the sale flyers. If you have them, that is great. We are going to do that later, but for now I need you to set them somewhere out of your field of sight. Instead, I want you to open your freezer, fridge, and cabinets. Write down what you have on hand. You will meal plan based on what you currently have in your home.

If you are like me, there are probably a bunch of random things in your cabinets that you picked up thinking you would use, but you never did. Or even better, you bought multiples of one thing because you kept forgetting that you had already bought it, and then you bought it again. For some reason, I do this with soy sauce all the time! I do not use soy sauce that often. So every time I want to make a recipe with soy sauce, I can not remember if I have any, and I end up buying more.

As you are writing down the ingredients you find in your home already, start thinking of ideas for what you can make with them. I write down all of these ideas on a separate sheet of paper as I go.

3. Choose your meals.

You will want to choose the meals that will make up your meal plan by determining what will make the best use of the ingredients that already have. So, start planning for meals that use up the ingredients that have a higher chance of spoiling first., Next, plan for the meals that will use up the most of your ingredients. For example, if I have bell peppers or onions that are starting to get questionable, I will create a meal that will use them up quickly (like stuffed pepper soup), and then once all of my soon to expire ingredients are used up, I will finish my meal plan based on what will use up the most ingredients that I already have on hand. As you come up with these meals, you will write out each ingredient you need for the meals you have planned out. The ingredients that you do not already have, there are always at least a few, will be the start of your grocery list.

How does Zero Waste Meal Planning save you money?

Anytime you use a meal plan and grocery list, instead of just buying items you think you may use at the grocery store, you will save money. Just having a plan is a great place to start, but ZWMP goes above and beyond having a plan. It actually uses up the ingredients that you already have on hand. It decreases your food waste. And my favorite, it stops you from buying repeats of items you already have on hand.

What happens when you use up all of your extra food?

When you are meal planning in a way that uses up all of your extra food, it seems like you may actually get to the point where you have no extra food in your house, but that is not the case. Because when you grocery shop for the extra ingredients you do not have on hand, chances are you will be purchasing in bulk to save money. For example, I can purchase a 2lb bag of pasta noodles for just a little bit more than I can buy a 1 lb bag. I may only need 1 lb of pasta for my meal plan this week, BUT it will save me money in the future to go ahead and buy a 2 lb bag. Also, grocery stores that run sale ads will generally have 2-3 items, every week, that are super cheap. For example, our local Hy-Vee ran a sale flyer last week that had 91% ground beef for 1.99 a pound. That is incredibly cheap for ground beef! Since I had extra money in my grocery budget, I bought 4 lbs of ground beef. I did not need them for my meal plan for the week, but it would have cost me twice as much to buy them for a future recipe, so I purchased them while they were on sale.

Notice that I did not meal plan based around the sale ads, but I still used them to get items for incredibly cheap. The reason that I do not recommend meal planning based on the sale ads, is that it fosters the building of a stockpile. A stockpile is just money sitting on your shelves. If you aren’t using the items, are you really saving money?

Why is Zero Waste Meal Planning essential for RV living?

When you are living in a tiny home, such as an RV, you are limited on space. Having a build-up of food in your RV just takes up all of the space, that you already do not have.

I know from firsthand experience.

I found this style of meal planning after I had already filled up both bench seat storage drawers, the cabinet above our kitchen sink, our pantry, and both fridges/freezers with food, spices, and dishes. (We have an outdoor kitchen with its own fridge/freezer.) By keeping a smaller amount of food on hand, we are able to use that extra space for different items, like an Instant Pot and an air fryer. It keeps items off of the counter and makes our tiny kitchen more functional.

Think about your RV or home. What cabinets and drawers do you have full of food? If you were able to clear half of that out, how much more room would you have? What could you put in that space? Would it free up enough room for you to buy pantry staples (flour, sugar, oil) in bulk? Bulk purchasing these items will save you money in the long run, but you have to have the space to store them.

If you can think of at least one other thing to do with that space, then ZWMP is probably a good fit for your lifestyle.

Do you meal plan? Are you going to try ZWMP? Are you already a ZWMP pro?

Let us know!

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