I don’t know about you, but I detest spending money on food. Don’t get me wrong, though — I love to eat.

The grocery store is one area where you can make or break your family budget. This week I offer additional tips for saving big on all the essentials without clipping coupons.

1. Keep the fridge clean. How often do you clean out your fridge? I bet the answer might scare some of us during a busy stretch (and when is life not busy?) but if you can keep a good inventory on what you have then food is less like to spoil. Throwing food away is the same as throwing money in the trash.

2. Use up your leftovers. I am the queen of reinventing food and sending back to my customers (i.e. my kids). I took leftover thinly sliced, breaded pork that we served several meals ago out of the freezer, topped it with spaghetti sauce and parmesan cheese and served up Pork Parmesan to my family. I got rave reviews from the same trio of girls who said, “I love your pork tenderloin but I’m so sick of eating it. Please don’t give us anymore!”

3. Freeze ‘em up. Utilize your freezer space not only with good deals, but by making freezer meals (look for more details about this in February when I guest blog for CouponGeek.com). You can freeze meals large enough for the whole family or in small, lunch-sized portions. It’s a great way to hide away leftovers for a few weeks and bring ‘em back for round two.

4. Make your own snack drawers. I keep ready to eat healthy snacks in one of my crisper drawers and the bottom drawer of my pantry. The kids always know where they can look for a snack and I only keep healthy snacks at their ready reach. I only buy items that are on sale, and it keeps their favorites in a natural rotation. They never tire of their favorites and I never pay full price for snacks.

5. Spend a buck to save lots of bucks later. I bought a large bag of clothes pins for a dollar at Target so we’d have no excuse for not properly storing and sealing food items. Stale chips or cereal are needless wastes of food, so be sure you package things up to keep them fresh for as long as possible.

Question: How much did you spend on your last trip to the grocery store?