6. Use the freezer as a pause button, and read dates properly
The freezer is where the last portion of waste gets recovered, and most households use perhaps a third of its potential.
Freeze before something is at risk, not after. Bread, milk, butter, cheese for cooking, cooked rice, bananas for baking, herbs in oil in an ice cube tray, tomato paste in spoonfuls, wine in cubes for sauces, and any cooked meal all freeze well. Portion flat in freezer bags so they stack like books, freeze faster and thaw quickly. Label everything with the contents and date, because an unlabelled frozen block is a future bin item.
Know what freezes badly so you do not waste the effort: salad leaves, cucumber, whole eggs in shells, cream sauces, fried food that needs crispness and boiled potatoes in liquid all come back poorly.
Keep a running list on the freezer door of what is inside. It sounds fussy and it is the single thing that turns a freezer from a graveyard into a working store. Cross items off as they are used.
Then get the dates right, because misreading them causes an enormous amount of avoidable waste. “Use by” is a safety date and applies to things like raw meat, fish and ready meals — respect it. “Best before” is a quality date, and most dry, tinned and even dairy products remain perfectly good well past it. Tinned food is typically fine for years; dried pasta and rice for longer still. Milk that smells and tastes normal is fine regardless of the printed date, and eggs can be tested by placing them in water — one that sinks and lies flat is fresh, one that stands on end is older but usable cooked, one that floats goes in the bin.
Finally, defrost the freezer if there is more than a quarter-inch of ice, since ice buildup costs efficiency and steals usable volume. Give the fridge a ten-minute weekly pass on the night before the bin goes out: check the eat-first box, wipe a shelf, bin what is genuinely gone. Doing it in the same slot as the rubbish means nothing lingers more than seven days, which is exactly the window in which most household food waste is created.