What's for Dinner?

I used to take the willy-nilly approach to grocery shopping, merrily frolicking through the aisles and picking up whatever looked yummy at the moment. Then the merry frolicking would come to an abrupt end when I went to check out and the bill was in the neighborhood of ninety bajillion dollars. And the nuisance of this system continued at home. When one has four jars of unopened salsa and not a single chip to apply salsa to, it's time to evaluate the system.

I've looked at systems suggested by other people and they just never seemed to work for me, so I've created my own. It actually seems to be working! I don't claim that it's a unique or genius system, but it does include those little, bright-colored sticky notes that I love. My husband and I sit down once a week and decide what meals we want for the next seven days. Then I make a list of every ingredient we need and check to make sure we don't already have those things. Of course, the store is the next step - stick to the list. Now come the sticky notes. I've made a "days of the week" chart for meal planning. Next to each day we put a sticky with the meal plan for that day. This way either of us can just check the chart and know what's for dinner. At the end of the week, we put all the sticky notes on the inside flap of the chart to be used again. Tada!

We've been doing this for a few weeks and it is amazing how much simpler grocery shopping and cooking are now. The amount of food we throw out because it has gone bad has been reduced to nothing because we plan for eating anything that will go bad quickly early in the week. It also saves a ton of money, and that should make The Budget Maven happy, too. :)