Meal Planning

Meal planning is an easy way to stick to your food budget and make your evenings a little less hectic. Meal planning may seem daunting at first, but with the right system you could plan a month's worth of meals in just a few minutes. There are countless ways you can tackle meal planning, so find a system that works for you.

My system is a little different than most, but it works for my family of picky eaters. My husband is VERY picky, and my daughter and I are are dairy free. This makes cooking for my family a little challenging in order to find a meal everyone can (and will) eat.

My first step was to make a list of all the meals I know my family loves. I aimed for at least 30 we could have a different dinner every night of the month. This was actually pretty easy once I got started. Just think of meals you frequently have and your family loves, and go from there.

Then came the tedious part- I wrote down all the ingredients for each meal. This really helps with grocery shopping and ensures I have everything I need. You only have to do this part once, then just keep the list with your meal planning pages in your household notebook.

Next I had to sort it all out. I like to grocery shop only once a month, buying in bulk and filling my freezer. To make meal prep easier, I choose one meat for each week, so I don't have ten different things thawing in the fridge.  The key here is to make a variety of meals with the same meat so you don't get bored. I sorted out my list into four main categories- beef, chicken, pork and vegetarian.

Once I had my list of meals and ingredients sorted out, I made a post-it for each meal. Of course mine were color coded, but that's not necessary. Post-its make it easy to move around on the calendar in case me week doesn't go as planned. You can find my Post-It Planner in my Household Notebook printables. 

Now on to the planning! I had to consider our weekly schedules- church on Wednesday nights, soccer on Saturdays, etc. I picked out crockpot meals or quick-cooking meals for the busy nights. I saved the meals that required more prep work or cooking time for the days I knew I'd be home. I also tried to group together meals that required the same basic prepping, such as cooking and shredding chicken. This allows me to only have to do it all once, and the prep work is done. See my post on prepping meals here. I continued picking time-appropriate meals until my calendar was full. I saved a couple "swap meals" on Post-It's in case I needed to swap out a meal if plans changed. My go-to swap meals are spaghetti, sandwiches, quick soups or an easy casserole. These are great when I am too busy or sick to cook my planned meals, and my 10 year old can help out more.

If you aren't a once-a-month shopper like me, you can do this on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly is you grocery shop on payday. Do what works best for you. You can also add a "new recipe" or "pinterest meal" Post-It to add new things to the mix. Next month, just move your post-its over to a new calendar, or just change the dates on your menu planner. Once you get all the grunt work done, it only takes a minute to label the month's meals. Meal planning is so easy, and can save your grocery budget and your sanity!

Mornings Are Hard

Mornings Are Hard

Getting children ready in the morning can be a challenge. Add in pets to take care of, parents who have to get ready for work, and differing schedules, and you’ve got a recipe for chaos. Planning ahead is the key to success. Many people choose to pick out their clothing the night before, but I can’t always guarantee I will be home at a decent time, or remember to do it on hectic nights, so I do the entire week at once. It has made mornings so much easier!

First, I set up a weekly organizer. Finding the right sizes, colors and quantities were the hardest part of this. I ended up using these stacking organizers I found in the kitchen section at Wal-Mart. They came 3 in a pack for about $5, so they were affordable enough to stock up on. I chose to do only kids’ clothing first, so I needed 15 (3 kids, 5 days). I opted not to do weekend outfits as we rarely leave the house on weekends. Since I could only find white bins, I needed to color code them myself. I used a roll of duct tape in each of their colors and just put a strip on the front. It needed to be visible when the containers were full, but it wasn’t necessary to cover the entire bin. I used the leftover tape to identify laundry baskets and other containers, but more on that later.

On the inside of each bin, I wrote the day of the week. It only had to be visible when filling the containers, so I just wrote it with a marker inside.

I then stacked them according to height, and lined them up for the week. This made it easier for my youngest to figure out which one to grab, since she was still learning the days of the week. Everyone grabbed from the same stack on the same day.

In each bin, I placed socks, underwear, pants, shirt, and matching accessories if needed (bow, belt, etc.). Everything they needed was ready to go.

We have our shoes in a separate organizer, but you could include them in a weekly clothing organizer if you wished. We no longer spent precious time hunting for the right pieces, and Daddy no longer dressed the children in off-season, ill-fitting clothes.

How it works: as I take clothes out of the dryer, or go through closets for already put away clothes, I match the outfits and fold them together. Since I only do Mon-Fri, I have all weekend to get it together. If I am washing clothes during the week, I will fold the outfits I want and separate them, and the kids put the rest of the clothes away. This way, when the organizer is emptied on Friday mornings, I have most everything ready to fill it for the next week. You could do it all Sunday night, or two weeks at a time, or whatever works for you. As long as everything is ready to go Monday morning, you can’t go wrong.

Now enjoy your morning cup of coffee just a little bit longer, the hard part is done!

Items Used:
Scotch Super Thin Waterproof Vinyl Plastic Colored Tape, .75-Inch by 125-Inch, 5-Pack

Basic White Stacking Bins - 3-pack - 12" X 9" X 5"

Sharpie Fine Point Permanent Markers, 12 Colored Markers(30072)