​How do Lazy-Girls save time and money on feeding our families? By planning things in advance! We like to have several meal plans so we can rotate them out and not get tired of eating the same things over and over.

Taking the time to plan out meals may take a little work in the beginning, but making a list before you go to the store – and sticking to it! – will save you a lot of time and money in the end.
Having a list helps prevent you from forgetting things you need and from having to go back to the store for it. Making multiple trips not only wastes gas and your time, but also increases the risk of tempting you into buying more stuff.

Spending a day organizing your meal plan may seem like too much work for a Lazy-Girl, but it isn’t.

Really! Do it once – the right way – and you’re done!

Ok, ok. So, you know you should plan things out… but it’s easier said than done, right!

No, it really is easy.

A great place to start is by simply writing down all the meals your family likes to eat. Just list them out on a piece of paper. That’s not hard, is it? Next, write each meal on an index card, and list out every ingredient needed for that meal. Then, group the meals by like items, and put in an index card box to make them easier to find. If you want to get really ambitious, you can include the prices for each ingredient.

Once you have the meals organized, making a meal plan isn’t so hard. Since there are 7 days in a week, we know we’ll need 7 dinners, plus meals for lunch on the weekends, breakfast every day, and lunches for work for myself and my husband. My kids eat lunch at school, so I don’t’ have to add that in. You’ll need to adjust your list according to your schedule.

So, that comes out to 9 meals, 7 breakfasts and 10 lunches for work. Breaking it down like this makes meal planning a lot easier. Now, go to the list of meals and choose one for each spot. Now that you know what you’re eating for the week, you can use the ingredients on the index cards to make your grocery list. Remember to make sure you check and see what you have so you don’t buy things you already have.

That’s it, you’re done!

If you’re trying to eat on a budget like I am, try grouping meals together that use the same ingredients. For example: one week I may get a 5 lb. log of hamburger meat, since it’s cheaper to buy in bulk than 1 lb. at a time. Out of that, we can have tacos, Sloppy Joe’s, Hamburger Helper, spaghetti and hamburgers in one week. That one item goes a long way toward 5 of the 9 meals I need for the week. Of course, we don’t want hamburger all the time, so we have plans for chicken, beef, and pork.

Before you head out for your next grocery shopping trip, save yourself some time and money by doing just a little planning!