list of steps to efficient meal planning

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list of steps to efficient meal planning

Mar, 25 Home Management, ListPlanIt.com, Meal Planning, Time Management

Many home cooks believe that meal planning is either too much work or unnecessary, but I believe that proper meal planning can be both simple and sanity/money-saving! It is a fact that fewer trips to the grocery store means less money spent. I like to plan my family’s meals bi-monthly (every pay period). This means one big shopping trip and one mini-trip about every 2 weeks.

Inventory your breakfast options
Inventory your lunch options
Inventory your dinner options
Create a Menu Planner for a specified period of time (1 to 2 weeks are recommended)
Carefully list ingredients on a well-organized Shopping List
Prominently display Menu Planner on refrigerator or other convenient location
Do your grocery shopping (without your children, if possible; this also decreases the amount of money spent on groceries)
Remember to shop for only what is on your grocery list – unless it is hurricane/tornado season where you live, you do not need to stock up unnecessarily
Look at your Menu Planner every morning so you are prepared for the meals ahead
Enjoy the flexibility you gain from having a number of meals all planned out. I usually do a little rearranging according to my cravings, but at least you’ve got what you need.

ListPlanIt.com has planning pages for Meal Inventories, a Menu Planner, and about a variety of Grocery/Shopping Lists – all ready to print or download!

One response to “list of steps to efficient meal planning”

Nikki says:
October 11, 2012 at 3:25 pm
This is one area I’m good at. I plan my menu a month at a time. The kids help so everybody gets a turn to have something they like. I use the weekly ad to decide which menu items we’ll use that week. I try to get stuff on sale. If I know I’m going to need 4 jars of pasta sauce for the month and they happen to go on sale the 2nd week, I buy 4. When I go to the store I have my list for that week and the master list in case I find stuff on sale that wasn’t in the ad. Just trying to save a few extra cents. My list is in store order with the most commonly purchased items pre-printed with space to write in other items. Just doing that saved so much time when I’ve had to shop with kids. Before we had kids I’d shop for the whole month saving a bit of money for weekly trips for milk and produce. I still plan the same, but shop a little differently to save a little more money now that we are a family of 5. The biggest struggle in this area is all the recipes I’ve collected on-line and in magazines….need to get them organized so they are useful instead of stress point.