Menu Planning…a year ago I never would have even considered something like that. Why? Well I didn’t know how and I didn’t know how much money it could save me.
Over the past year, I have become a firm believer that in order to maintain a grocery budget, you MUST plan your meals. And now that we are trying to eat Organic, I am even more convinced.
Successful meal planning involves using what you already have on hand, along with sales and coupons to create a list of meals for your family to eat for the week. Using this strategy enables you to keep your costs down by enabling you to only buy necessities (milk, eggs, produce, etc…) and to stock up on sale items.
If you are new to the whole stockpiling method (you should be doing this) and to meal planning, I recommend heading on over to Money Saving Mom. This has to be my favorite blog when it comes to making your grocery money go the extra mile. Now I will preface this by stating that Money Saving Mom is not a blog about eating Organic. However, you can learn a TON from her when it comes to the principals of saving money on groceries, monthly cooking and meal planning.
There are many different ways you can approach menu planning and I suggest you play around and find one that works for your family.
My preferred method is to create a list of 7 dinners and 5 lunches. Nothing specific by day, just options. Our weekly plan usually looks something like this:
Meatless Monday: vegetarian dish x1
Breakfast for dinner x1
Leftovers x1
Dinner out x1
3 other misc. meals such as Penne with Sausage or Tacos and Rice.
You get the picture.
The point here is to have something planned. Usually, the night before I will decide what we will be eating based on this list and defrost the proper ingredients. And when we get home from work the next day, guess what?! We are ready to go. Just have to throw everything together and voila! Dinner is served. No more hour long discussions about what to eat only to end up eating fast food. And thus we have saved money!
My lunch menu usually consists on 3 leftovers and a couple of sandwiches. Planning this ahead of time and preparing it when I pack up the leftovers keeps me from running off to work without a lunch and being forced to eat out.
It amazes me how much money we can save each week by doing this simple task. I spend about 10-15 minutes each Saturday preparing our menu. And the savings between not eating out and from using what is already in the pantry is astonishing. This simple task is now allowing me to purchase more and more organic food because I have carefully planned out our meals and can focus on the task of stockpiling when I do happen to find foods on sale or have coupons.
Next up on Going Green on a Budget: Making the move to Organic foods.
