I have a new hobby - organization. It's like any other hobby that I have. I don't have time for it so it only gets partially done but I enjoy doing it when I do it. So for those that have asked about my house cleaning challenge. Well it stalled after day 1 but I did clean my "fun room" and it looks a lot better. I decided that the only way to have your house be sparkly clean for one day is to hire a maid, preferably at the level called "white glove" cleaning. I am sure that's not cheap so my house is going to remain moderately clean when it can be but I doubt I will see sparkles any time soon. But I digress.
When I wanted to clean though, I found two website - organizedhome.com and avirtuouswoman.org and both of them had the concept of a household notebook. I loved this idea and skipped my way to Target to find a notebook, dividers, and an 3 ring punched pocket folder (for holding receipts, of course). So my notebook has phone lists, to do lists, directions to places, rebate information, the current month's receipts, tips on cleaning the home, this month's google calendar, grocery price list, pantry inventory, freezer inventory, all the YMCA schedules (with an asterisk by the classes that have childcare, of course). Putting together this notebook has been great fun.
But it gets more fun. My friend at Bible Study mentioned that she meal planned for the whole month. I remember when I used to do this and helps tremendously. I hate meal planning so getting it done one time at the beginning of the month will save me hours of fretting each Monday wondering what I will eat that week. So here's what I did.
1. Created an Excel spreadsheet with all the days of March. Immediately wrote in all the days that I would be at church or some other function that would not involve me being at home cooking. Then I started filling in the days with meals from my meal collection that I use on a regular basis.
2. In Word on page 1, I made an a list of all the meals and wrote next to them what ingredients that I would need to buy for that meal. I didn't include all the things like spices because I always have those and I immediately buy them again if I run out. I then made 4 grocery lists - one for each week. I put the dinner and its ingredients that I thought I was going to make that week at the top and then I put all the ingredients in the sections below - Deli, bakery, meat, dry, dairy, vegetables, frozen foods. Now I may have to change when I eat what when which is where having the ingredients listed out helps. If I have "parmesan chicken - parsley" on week 3 and I need to switch it to week 4 because "tilipia - garlic" is on sale. Then I know to cross out parsley on week 3 and add garlic and tilipia to week 3 and move parsley to week 4.
3. Now here is where I get a little nuts. Okay, maybe by this point, you are already thinking that. Okay probably. So I typed all the recipes into Word. There is about 13 of them. Some nights like tacos didn't have a recipe. I did this for two reasons. The 1st one is that eventually I will have a large database of recipes - my very own recipes that I like a lot. And being in Word, I can search for ingredients so that I don't waste half an onion. The 2nd reason is because after I wrote in all my recipes (I should also mention that I really like typing too), I think printed them all out.
So now my Meals tab on my notebook looks like this
1. Month with all the meals listed out by day
2. All dinners listed with extra ingredients needed to purchase
3. Four grocery lists - one for each week. I buy all my dry ingredients in week 1 so that if I have to change up the recipes and have to stop at the store in mid- week, I usually will only have to pick up the meat and few veggies and not all the ingredients which helps a lot with two kids!
4. All my recipes for that month.
It's so exciting. It's so fun. I love it. If anyone would like a copy of my 13 recipes, let me know except for the few from the food network, they are all pretty easy.
I am hoping my planning will decrease my grocery spending and also my dining out spending. We will see!! Of course, like all my other gung ho ideas, I will probably only do this for the month of March but March is done. Woo!
Hands for who thinks I am crazy?
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3 comments:
Crazy like a fox!
I do this on a weekly basis. It works really well for me because I absolutely refuse to go to the grocery store after work.
And I have seen people struggling with small children in the grocery store and it looks like an absolute nightmare. So efficiency is a winner all around I'd say.
I use a white board.
Not anything super fancy like a 3 ring binder and excel.
I also hated going to the grocery store after work. If dinner wasn't in the house, I recommended cereal. I still do. But Chris doesn't eat cereal for dinner. So far it is working well. I have had to re-arrange a few meals but it has all worked out. We had to eat out once but it was for lunch because it was already 2 PM and we were starving and had nothing at home. But so far, no eating out for dinner. Progress!
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