Menu Planning to Save Money (31 Days of Imperfect Homemaking)

It's day 3 of 31 Days of Imperfect Homemaking!  If you missed either of the first days, you can go back and catch up right here.

Fridays during this challenge will be all about frugal living.  It's easy to get careless and skip over things that could be saving your family money, so I've added a few things to this challenge that you can do quickly and easily to help shave down your family's budget.

Ready?

Today's Challenge:   Make a menu plan.

Menu planning is one of those things I always tell myself I can skip, but I always regret it when I do!  We go back and forth to the store to pick up missing ingredients, or we snack on junk because I do the 5 o'clock scramble and everybody's hungry while I try to come up with some type of meal.  It really only takes a few minutes to make a menu plan.  It doesn't have to be complicated.  I like to use Build A Menu‘s service (it's great for special diets too like gluten free and THM!), but you can use a piece of notebook paper and a pen.  Look in the fridge and see what you already have.  Write down any meals that use those ingredients.  Then write down a few more meals that your family likes.  Now, get another scrap of paper, and write down all the ingredients for the other meals you just wrote down.  And you're done.  How hard was that?  Why do we skip it and act like it has to be done some fancy way?  (Granted, you can save even more money by taking a little more time, but you're not saving any money if you don't do it at all!  If you want something a little more involved but still quick and easy to do, I highly recommend checking out Build a Menu.)

 

Now go get that list made!  And while you're at it, save it.  Do it again for the next 3 weeks, and you've got a month's worth of meal plans!  Make one big menu, and one big shopping list, and you can re-use it month after month!

Today's Instagram challenge: Post a picture of this week's menu plan!  Use the hashtag #imperfecthomemaker to encourage other members of this community!  (Follow me here.)