My advice is simple. Just decide to do it and then do it. If doing a whole month seems daunting, try starting with doing just one week. When you are comfortable doing that, try doing two weeks and so on.
Menu planning isn't for everyone. I can attest to the blessings my family has seen by my being prepared;
- Our grocery bill has shrink drastically because I am buying what we need. No longer am I trying to fill our pantry with things we "might" use. Sure I am still working on building up our food storage, but I am more in tune with what we actually use. Food no longer goes to waste waiting for the day we "might" use it.
- My family eats more dinners at home around the table. Sadly before Meghan started eating solid foods, we ate a lot of dinners in front of the T.V., or just went out. We still go out, but only once a week. That has saved us a lot of money. No one is perfect and there have been a couple of times that we have gone out when it wasn't planned, but those occasions have decreased dramatically since I began menu planning.
- We try more new recipes. No longer am I scrambling at the last minute to come up with an idea for dinner. When scrambling I find myself turning to the tried and true dinners of things like tacos on a regular basis. Now there is nothing wrong with tacos, it is still one of our favorite meals, but families can not live on tacos alone. My husband would argue that....
1 comment:
After seeing your menu for the month (and before reading this post), I actually tried a meal planner for the entire month of February. We've strayed a few times...initially because there was a problem with monies and I didn't have what I needed for the scheduled meals that week so we had to rearrange things, and then because the Minis didn't do their chores and I refuse to cook in a dirty kitchen so it was an unplanned "fend for yourself" night...
The result...I've eliminated the guesswork on what to fix, we try a new recipe at least once a week (we have "mystery meal" on the calendar and I try a new recipe weekly), the girls are doing more of the cooking and I've shaved $200 off my grocery bill...I was bummed it wasn't more but $200 is still quite a bit.
Thanks for the inspiration (and all the yummy recipes too), I appreciate it.
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