I recently felt even more motivated to figure out a way to plan our meals and grocery shops after reassessing our grocery budget. Going to the grocery store without a plan always ended up with me overspending and it's embarrassing how much of that food would end up going to waste. When I did try to meal plan I would end up picking meals for the week that had very few overlapping ingredients. I would end up with an abundance of random left over ingredients sitting in my fridge which still had me wasting food. Or I would pick recipes with ingredients I would probably never use again and they would also sit in my fridge until they inevitably expired.
My aimless visits to the grocery store would also result in a full fridge and pantry but nothing to make for dinner. It felt impossible to turn my unfocused grocery shop into an actual meal so dinner time would hit and we would end up just getting take-out because we had 'nothing to make for dinner'.
Can anyone relate to this?
After a lot of trial and error I can finally say I have found a way to meal plan that is simple, organized and saving us money.
1) Find a planner: After trying every meal planning app my iphone had to offer, I decided to go back to good old fashioned paper. I picked up an inexpensive ($10) planner from HomeSense in December. Ideally you'll want a weekly planner that has a space for notes. This one happened to have the weekly planner on the left side and then a section for notes and a to-do list so it was perfect.
2) Have a list of go-to meals: I admittedly hate coming up with dinner ideas. This was one of my biggest barriers when it came to meal planning. I found it helped to have a list on my phone of our favourite meals and a few pinterest boards of healthy meals I'd like to try. I also like to flip through my favourite healthy cookbooks to see if anything inspires me. If I'm struggling to think of meals to prepare I will honestly just flip back to past weeks in my meal planning book and just repeat meals. Kevin doesn't care and it just makes my life easier sometimes.
3) Start planning: Before I do anything I look at my calendar and see what we have going on that week. Are there any meals that we will be out of the house for or are there any nights I need to make sure the meal is really quick? For example, Thursday nights I have spin so I need to make sure that dinner is extra quick and easy. I can't tell you how many times in the past that I planned dinners for nights that we weren't home and yet again, food just ended up going to waste if we couldn't get to it in time.
Next I start browsing my lists of go-to meals I jot down any that I'd like to make that week in the notes section. I also quickly take a look at my pantry, fridge and freezer to see what we have that could be used in the meal planning. I should probably mention that I use pencil during this entire process because things do change and I like to be able to make changes easily. Once I have a few meals picked out I start on Monday and enter breakfasts for the week. I usually have the same few breakfasts on rotation so that's easy. Then I go back to Monday and working my way down the week I start deciding on my lunches and dinners. Sometimes my lunches will just be leftovers from the previous day to make things easier.
On Sundays I plan for Monday-Thursday and on Thursday I plan for Friday-Sunday. I try to use any left over groceries from earlier in the week when I plan the weekend meals.
4) Write your grocery list: I use the to-do list on the right side of the planner to write my grocery list. I start on Monday's breakfast and write any groceries that I will need for that meal that we are missing from our pantry or fridge. Next I do Monday's lunch and dinner, then I move onto Tuesday, etc. If I plan on having leftovers for a meal then I make sure my grocery list has enough ingredients for there to be food left over.
5) Review and Edit: This is the step that I never used to do and I think it's been the game changer for me. If my grocery list looks like it's getting too long or I see an ingredient on it that I know deep down I will never use again, I edit my plan. I either substitute that ingredient or I switch that meal out for another one. I also try to watch out for ingredients that come in packs larger than my plan calls for. For example, a few weeks ago I put "baby spinach" on my grocery list because I planned for one spinach salad. After reviewing my grocery list and plan I knew I would end up throwing out the spinach because at no other point had I planned to use that spinach. I edited my plan to make sure that I would use as much of the spinach as I could. This has also helped me not throw away whole wheat tortilla shells, corn tortillas and other packaged items.
Before I head to the grocery store I like to transfer my grocery list to my cell phone but that's just me. I also like to put the list in order of where it would be located in the grocery store so I can get in and out of there as quickly as possible. I like efficiency a little too much haha.
So that's it! I've gotten to the point where I *gasp* look forward to meal planning. I know, I'm shocked as well.
Let me know if you have any tips for successful meal planning because I always love hearing what other people do.
Happy Monday!
This is such great advice. I too struggle with leftover groceries at the end of the week... it literally gives me anxious feelings when the fridge is still full on Friday. I'm going to try to implement that last tip most of all.. edit edit edit.
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