I’ve not been very good about continuing with this concept. It seems like I mostly think of it in relation to music, and I figure I have enough music content here already. Or when I get a decent, non-music idea, I have enough other posts lined up. I have a few of those ideas sitting in my drafts folder and will try to share them plus add some new entries so this can be a more regular feature.

Today I’m going to rank the things that get wasted the most in our house. These are in no particular order.

1 – Fresh fruit/vegetables
I feel bad about this one. It seems like we’re always throwing away at least one apple, banana, or orange that sits on the counter too long. But worse are the berries and veggies that get put into the fridge. I’ll remember to take them out for dinner one night then not think of them again for a week, when they are either moldy or mushy. Big time consumer/parent fail here.

2 – Notebooks/notebook paper
I wonder what percentage of notebooks I’ve purchased in my life that were more than 60% used when I chucked them into the trash or recycling. And each spring the girls hand me their leftover loose leaf paper, which goes into a stack that is so tall it will likely never be exhausted.

3 – Ice cream
My family loves to eat about two-thirds of a tub of ice cream then shove it to the back of the freezer where it sits, growing freezer burn crystals, until I toss it two months later.

4 – Leftovers
The girls are not huge fans of leftovers. We try to have one dinner per week that is made up of whatever we ate the previous 2–3 nights. But I still toss far too much food I’ve cooked to clear space before I make a big trip to the grocery store. I feel like most of my recipes don’t result in huge portions, either. I try to do my part, but I have a hard time eating leftovers more than a couple times.

5 – Magazines
I was struggling to think of a fifth entry. Then I looked at our coffee table. I get one golf magazine that I don’t pay for but keeps arriving every month. I never read it. We got Indianapolis Monthly for years without ever doing more than checking the restaurant listings. It looks the they finally stopped auto-renewing it for us, but we still have a stack of them. And S gets several medical journals each month. She flips through a few of them, but a couple are related to her previous speciality and go straight into the recycling. I still love getting a magazine or two before we take a trip, but I rarely get through the entire volume. They’ll join the pile until my twice-yearly purge.

A far cry from when I got Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and a few more magazines regularly and almost always read them front-to-back.