For many people who work hard to make ends meet, savings may seem like a Fata Morgana: so close, yet always beyond reach. It's normal not to be able to save money, when you barely earn enough to cover basic living expenses.

Whether or not you make savings or not, please go now, open your fridge and take a look inside: are there any expired cans or other kind of foods you're going to throw away immediately? I'm going to publish a poll at the end of this hub, to see how many of us deal with this type of waste. Actually, I've just opened my fridge just before sitting here to write this article, and seeing that I have to throw away some expired foods and some cooked food nobody ate for a few days now, I realized that's an avoidable waste. Why cook a lot, if you know you can't eat it in due time? Why buy too much? If next time you go to the market and buy less foods, then put the monetary difference aside, you've not only cut your waste, but you've just started to save money. Try to do this and when you'll be tempted to take the savings and spend them, think as you don't have any, think that would have been money thrown away at the garbage, if you haven't changed your shopping style.

Each time I throw away bread too old to be eaten anymore, I remember the statistics stating that 10% of the people in my country can't afford to buy bread every day. Of course, after thinking like that, I tend to buy less than enough and I have the whole family on my head that I told them we had enough bread while it's obvious we don't.

These are a few personal considerations on how one can save money by better organizing the kitchen and the whole cooking process:

• Save money on buying only necessary kitchenware. No matter how cute a new slow cooker may look, if you've already got a similar one, refrain from buying it. Do you have enough cutlery for your family and friends? Don't buy new sets just because you thought they were a bargain. Even in case of huge discounts, even if you get an item for $20 when it usually costs $100, you haven't saved $80, but wasted $20. Don't buy what you don't need.
• Save money by buying good quality detergents. A good quality detergent wil cost you more than a poor quality one, but you'll use lesser quantities with better results, so one expensive bottle will last maybe three times a poor quality one. Besides, cheap products may not work at all in some cases, so again, instead of saving the difference of money from poor to good, you've just wasted money by buying something that you can't use at all.
• Save money by using leftovers. There are situations when we cook too much, so we can't actually eat the whole quantity. The Thanksgiving turkey is only one example. Of course we put the leftovers in the fridge, hoping that we are going to eat them the next day, but many times, nobody wants to eat them anymore, so we throw them away. All you have to do is such cases is to try a Google search for turkey leftover recipes, and you'll see what creativity can do to cold turkey meat. You can make pizza, for example.
• Save money by slow cooking. If you make the fire too big, not only you'll burn your foods, but you'll also destroy your pots and pans too early. Make sure to have the fire low, not matter in what hurry you may be. By cooking at very high temperatures, the foods will get burnt on the edges, while remaining raw in the middle. That's bad for health, so you'll have to spend money on drugs for digestion, besides the fact that you'll need new kitchenware very often.
  

Saving money by smart shopping is real. However, beware that cheap is not always the way to go, so think very well before going cheap, like buying generics or products made in China or in Taiwan or who knows where else. Here are a few tips to follow when shopping on a shoestring budget, based on my personal experience with saving mnoey in shops:

• Cheap household appliances are usually low quality. This comes from my personal experience. To give you only one example, I've bought a coffee maker which was about 10% of the price of a brand name one, thinking what a great deal I've made. Although it looked OK, that coffee maker was not properly adjusted, so the water was running through it much too fast to allow the coffee to get any flavor - mainly, that machine was producing colored water, with a vague coffee smell. Next weekend, we've bought a new machine, an well-known and trusted brand, this time, which was a good purchase.
• Generic razor blades can turn shaving into torture. This is another experience of my partner's trying to save money. He thought to cut the costs on his shaving products and bought some razors that weren't properly sharpened.
• Cheap batteries are very similar to no batteries. I've got an electric toothbrush and I thought to buy those no-name, cheap batteries, thinking that a toothbrush has quite a low power consumption. I was wrong, as those batteries last for two days. A good pair would have last for at least two weeks, so again, I spent more by being cheap.
• Cheap laundry detergents can be as effective as expensive ones. This is an area where I found savings to not endanger the quality of life. As far as I've understood, the difference between cheap detergents and expensive ones is in the additives that help keeping the clothes like new for a longer time. However, I must confess I get bored with my clothes every three years or so, therefore I don't need them to last longer. Why buy expensive laundry detergents then, instead of saving money for other things?

How do you save money when shopping?