It’s Friday (at least for a couple more hours) and time for another Frugal post from Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife.

I’ve had one of those days … I’m sure you can relate. What should have been a quick little project dragged on and on and took a good 6 hours longer than I expected it to take. Which also explains why I’m just now writing today’s blog post here on “They Call Me Wahmmy”. Thankfully Arika is a great friend and I’m sure she’ll forgive me

Working from home, I don’t have to tell you that quite a few days each month (and sometimes a week) end up the way mine does and one think that keeps me sane and helps me still find time for my family is to plan my meals ahead of time. I’ve gotta tell ya … without my plan there is no way I could have made dinner tonight.

Let’s talk for a second about how meal planning can help us WAHMs during our busy work weeks (which are usually Monday – Sunday).Then I’ll walk you through how I make my weekly meal plans.

Meal Planning Saves Time

When I plan my meals ahead of time, I only head to the store once a week to get everything I need. I noticed that I spent a lot less time in the store when I’m “on a mission” to just find everything on my list.

It also saves me time each night because I know exactly what I’m going to cook and what I need to do to get started. No more standing in front of the fridge and pantry trying to figure out what I could possibly make for dinner. I have my plan and am ready to cook.

Meal Planning Saves Money

We save quite a bit on groceries since I started menu planning.  There are two reasons – having my grocery list keeps me from making impulse buys on stuff we don’t really need. We also use up (almost) all the food I buy and there’s a lot less that gets thrown out because it goes bad before we have a chance to eat it.

Ready to give meal planning a try? Here’s how I do it:

I sit down on Sunday night and come up with 7 dinners for the week. I usually include 1 freezer meal and 1 crockpot meal. If I think we’ll likely have quite a few leftovers I also declare one night later in the week leftover night where we just heat up everything that’s hanging out in the fridge and serve it buffet style.

Next I get my recipes out as needed and write down any ingredients I need to buy. I usually categorize the items by section in the grocery store (i.e. all meat together, all dairy, all canned goods etc.) so I don’t have to run back and forth through the store as I shop.

I also keep a master list of the meals for the week on my fridge and the recipes I’ll need close by. It makes it easy for me, but also comes in handy when I’m stuck running errands or am trying to finish up a project and hubby starts dinner.

I usually just plan on a week by week basis. Here are some other options:

Plan dinner the night before. It’s a great way to get your feet wet, but not very convenient for the long run.

Plan two weeks at a time.

Plan a month at a time. You can try to get most of your groceries in just one huge shopping trip per month, but I would recommend getting perishables like produce, meat etc. fresh on a weekly basis.

I hope you take the time to make a weekly meal plan and see if this works for your family. It takes a little getting used to at first, but I promise it is well worth the effort and it’ll get easier the more you plan.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week with some more frugal cooking tips. If you’re interested in meal planning, I’d like to invite you to order my Meal Planning Made Simple ebook today. 20% of my profits in October will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Susanne – The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.HillbillyHousewife.com

P.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts on meal planning. Is this something you do regularly? What’s your preferred method of meal planning?