So much has
been going on! Scott traveled some this summer for Chick Fil A and enjoyed
every minute of it. So for weeks on end, I’m at home doing all the laundry,
dishes, diapers, trash, folding, scrubbing, sweeping, bill paying, mail
checking, bathing, errand running, grocery shopping, cooking, vacuuming, gas
pumping, and paci finding. Oh yeah and I work full time. I have a new appreciation
for single working mothers. I don’t know how you do it! Having a
husband pretty much spoils you!
So a couple
of people have asked me how I do it all. How do I work, cook meals for my
family, keep my house clean, and have all this “leisure time” to be doing Pinterest projects and
such. Well I don’t have much leisure time, except when I get to potty alone.
Any other leisure time I have is spent playing candy crush and occasionally
updating this blog. All the crafting I do, I see as a nessisity to life. Just
like eating I NEED to do it. It makes me happy. And we all know as a working
mother you have to have that “me” time to keep your sanity. All my little projects are
my “me” time. And pedicures. Pedicures are
my drug of choice.
While I
think the key here is time management (which I am not always a pro at) I will
share with you other methods I use to deal with the madness. However, I will be
focusing on meal planning, since this is what I get asked about the most.
First, there
are many blogs and Pinterest boards devoted to meal planning and I am
definitely not an expert. But I am lazy. And busy. So I feel that there are
millions of other moms out there just like me who would like to know how to
make this work
As a side
note, most people meal plan for the whole month. This is great if you know that
you are not ever going out to eat or ever have last minute plans that mess up
your eating agenda for the day. Also, I live in an apartment with a rather
small fridge/freezer so I really do not have the space to store a whole month’s
worth of food. I cant figure out how people keep the produce fresh for the
whole month. Obviously, they buy frozen or they are going to buy fresh produce
every week, which totally negates meal planning in the first place (at least in
my eyes). I also know I get paid bi-monthly so there is no way we could afford
to shell out the money to buy all the groceries at once.
Monthly
would work if you:
*get a big
paycheck once a month (or if you just have a ton of money in the first place)
*have a big
fridge and/or a deep freeze
*have a
large pantry
If you are
in the same boat as me, then weekly works fine too.
1)
THE
LIST
I make a grocery list. It
is bizarre to me that people actually go to the store without a list. How to do
you remember everything? There is nothing more annoying than running from one
end of the store and back again because you keep remembering other things to
you need.
There are several pros to
making a list
*you save money
*you save time
*do you need more pros? I didn’t think so.
Here’s how I break it
down. Pull out a piece of paper and make categories that correlate to the
sections of your grocery store. Mine usually looks like this:
Produce: Meat:
Dairy: Canned:
Dry: Frozen:
Misc.
Then I move into step 2…..
2)
PLANNING
MEALS
Again, I cannot just walk
into a grocery store and think “what do I want to eat this week?” $180 later, I have a buggy full of
things that make like 3 meals. So I must plan it out in advance.
First, I look at Scotts schedule to
see how many nights he will be working. On those nights, I do not plan to cook
because it is pretty much impossible. My “go to” meals for these nights are
either frozen skillet meals or chicken noodles with a veggie as a side. I love
the skillet meals because they always have a meat, a veggie, and a carb in
them. They are always tasty. And lastly, they take 14 mins to cook. It doesn’t
get easier than that. If you can boil water you can make chicken noodles. Cook
noodles, drain, pour a can of cream of chicken on it and call it good. When I’m
real lazy I microwave a can of green beans to go with it. (Gosh, if I never
sounded white trash, that was it) I always keep a stock of canned veggies in
the pantry for such nights. If you don’t believe in canned veggies or only eat
organic…I don’t think I can help you much. Bless your heart.
For
the nights that Scott is home, I prefer to cook and prepare a meal. I don’t
know, I kinda like being that wife that woos my husband with food. I like to
rotate a few of our favorite meals with new meals every week. I get my
inspiration from Simple and Delicious magazine and Pinterest. Also, as a side
note, I LOVE my Six Sisters Cookbook. Never a bad meal out of that one. They
have a blog, I highly recommend it!Six Sisters Stuff I pick a complete meal (main dish and a
side) for each night remaining in the week.
After
I have picked my meals, I then plug in all the ingredients I will need for each
meal into my grocery list. Pretty easy. I then add the other things, like
breakfast and lunch items, into my list.
Now
here’s how you stay on budget….
3)
IF ITS NOT ON THE LIST DO NO BUY IT.
You
have already listed EVERYTHING you need to make dinner, lunch, and breakfast
for an entire week. If it is not on the list, you do not NEED it. They only “snack”
item I buy is goldfish for Bryce. We are never home during the day, so we don’t
need any snack food. If we get that hungry we eat a banana or a bowl of cereal.
You waste so much money buying empty calories.
Couponing
is over-rated. Kroger brand is the cheapest option even if you have a $2.00 off
coupon for the name brand. This is true 99% of the time. Also, most of the coupons
I come across are not for products I would ever buy anyways. Like cat food and
contact solution. If you are into couponing, great. But its not for me. Everything
that goes into my buggy is Kroger brand. EVERYTHING. And then I DO use my
Kroger coupons that come in the mail.
When
picking meals, I tend to scan the list of ingredients. If I am going to have to
buy more than 4-5 ingredients, then I toss that recipe out the window. The cost
of the meal goes up with each ingredient. Obviously, I’m not including spices
and pantry items I already keep stocked. This rule helps with cost but also
with simplifying your meals. As a rule of thumb, I aint go no time to be
cooking no meal that requires cutting an peeling 6 things. However, I usually
go all out for 1 meal each week. This is usually our Sunday Dinner. I might
spend $20 on that one meal alone. We eat good on Sundays. Mmmmm.
I
follow these 3 simple rules, and I spend between $80-$100 dollars a week on
groceries for a family of 3.
Hopefully,
all of that made sense. Maybe you read that and was like “Wow, that was stupid.
Everyone knows that.” Maybe it actually helped you. If you have any feedback on
your meal planning experiences, please let me know and leave a comment!
