Meal Planning

One of my least favorite things is to go to the grocery store. I'm a one trip a week kind of girl. If I need to go more than that, I tend to default and just go grab a bite to eat from a restaurant or fast food. A habit that I was more than ready to get rid of post-college.

Getting married and being a wife now responsible for feeding my always-hungry husband, that whole eating out thing had to change. A) It gets expensive. B) Eating out isn't necessarily the healthiest option (gotta keep up with the LGN diet, ladies!). C) Contrary to grocery shopping trips, I actually enjoy cooking and making creations in the kitchen!

So, to make eating dinners at home and packing lunches actually work, I was able to use my organization skills and create a meal-planning method that works for us. We've been doing this for several weeks now and it has saved us from several grocery store trips a week as well as many restaurant bills! Not to mention, when I get home from work after sitting in traffic for a while, I never have to waste time thinking about what to cook for dinner. It's already planned and I can immediately start cooking!

I started with just planning dinners, but after many weeks of running out of cereal mid-week, or not having anything for lunch and having to go out to eat, I changed my strategy and now plan all of our meals. Its more of a strategy to make sure that we have enough food to allow us to make it though a week, and it works! I plan my meals and sides before we head to the grocery store and then make my list accordingly. Your grocery bills might increase a tad, but the free time you have throughout the rest of the week is totally worth it. Since this method has worked so well for us, I wanted to share the spreadsheet you'll see on the front of our fridge each and every week!

If you try this out, let me know how it works for you! You can download it here.