Menu Planning 101

Historically, I have not been a fan of lists however my dear husband will make a list to make a list. He loves the “write it down it and check it off” process! It is exhilarating and he has let me know this way before we even said I do. I remember when we were dating, he would always have a yellow pad that he carried around with this never-ending list! Well, I would buy into it for a while then fall off, then try again and fall off, then again and again…the cycle just kept going, until now!

I have officially joined the society of listmaking, well my way of course. I have realized that lists can be helpful and one that has really changed my life is the weekly menu. I have read lots of articles and blogs that say plan a menu according to the sales and shop for it weekly. Well, that doesn’t quite work in our house because we don’t shop to eat, we shop to stock our personal grocery store.

Okay, let me stop here for a moment and explain. We have certain staples that we typically keep in the house all the time because I know on a whim that I can whip something up and everyone will be happy. There are other things we stockpile when we find them on sale, to a reasonable limit of course and those are usually the items I wouldn’t buy otherwise, like cookie butter (yum)!

The Pantry

Since we shop a little differently, we had to come up with a system to make sure that we are using everything we have without wasting a lot of food. There was one point, back when I was heavy into couponing, that we would easily have 12 boxes of cereal! There was no way we could eat all of that at one time so we split our pantry into sides. There is one side for unopened items and one side opened items. So once you open a box of cereal it moves to the opened side and we try to finish the items on the opened side before we go back to the unopened side. This really helps us reduce food waste and to keep track of what we need to finish. We have the same set up with our fridges with the in-use fridge being in the house and the shopping fridge being in the garage.

So instead of shopping in the grocery store to plan my menu, I plan my menu based on what we have in our store. This includes fresh produce which I typically only buy on sale, in season or as a staple weekly. Right now in our house, you can almost always find an orange! The weekly menu is planned and posted on the fridge every Sunday so the kids know if they want something special, this is the time to speak up because once it is done, it’s done!

When I first started planning and writing down a weekly menu, I would just grab whatever paper I could find around the house to get it done. I had to catch the motivation while I had it! It didn’t have to be elegant, just functional. However starting this month, I am using a cool template just because it looks better on the fridge. I was also able to print a freezer inventory template and pantry inventory template which goes great with our system. So now we are a bona fide menu planning house! Yeah!

Menus

I think one of the best perks that has come out of menu planning, well other than saving money of course, is that everyone helps out! As long as my husband has some type of direction, he will jump in some mornings and make breakfast and pack lunches without having to ask me a million questions. Even my daughter has had a few occasions where she will do the same. It really takes the stress off the morning because as I am sure you know all too well, the morning rush can be a little hectic.

So I will admit this making lists thing isn’t half bad and it has already started to creep into other areas of my life (just don’t tell my husband I said that!). If you aren’t doing this already, I recommend it and planning a menu is a great place to start!