
I've been asked so much recently how on earth I have time to get all that I get done, done and still have time to play and occasionally shower.
Well after 2 years of being a mom, I've finally figured it out. Call me Kate Gosslin, but it really is all about ORGANIZATION!
I think with a little bit of strategy, every SAHM can get everything they need to get done with minimal stress. Now let me preface this by saying, I'm talking about full-time SAHM's. When I worked outside the home, throwing a frozen lasagna in the oven equated me to being a gourmet chef! And also if you are pregnant, you get a pass :)
A huge part of me being organized is what I do every Monday. That is when I make my weekly to do list and also the weekly meal plan.
Here is how I do it:
On the fridge is a monthly calendar. On that calendar I keep all our events. We are pretty good at keeping up with it. Jon writes down everything he has to do, and I write down all the big events of the month. That way we know what's going on from a week to week basis with no surprises.
Why is this important? Well because the first step in making a meal plan is to know how many meals you will be eating at home. Sounds simple right? Nope. It's not.
What I do is I look at my calendar and if we don't have anything going on in the evenings, I will know to plan for 5 meals.
That would be Monday Night, Tuesday Night, Wednesday Night, Thursday Night and Sunday Night.
Friday night is Shabbat (normally wing that one on Friday as we never know in advance what we'll be doing for dinner) and Saturday is normally our restaurant night.
In my opinion and experience, if you are planning on cooking dinner every night of the week, only buy stuff for 6 dinners. Why? Well because chances are one of those nights you are either going to be in a bad mood, ridiculously tired or you may just plain not want to cook. Whether or not you go out to a restaurant or togo food is up to you, but it may be one of those nights you make sandwiches and call it a day.
So basically what I'm saying is add up the number of meals you need to cook that week and minus one.
Then look at your trusty monthly calendar again and see how many "quick" dinners you need to make. For example, Jonathan plays at The Well 2 nights a month. On those nights, dinner has to be ready by 6pm, so since I don't get my butt up to start cooking normally till close to 6, that dinner that night needs to be able to be cooked quickly.
So now you know how many dinners you need to plan, now it's time to look for inspiration! :)
My favorite places to go is
www.thepioneerwoman.com/cooking and also
www.allrecipes.comI peruse Pioneer Woman's recipes and normally snag one or two, then I go to All Recipes and type in something random like chicken pasta or shrimp or something and then that will pull up all these different recipes people have submitted. The cool thing about All Recipes is that once you register, you can easily put a recipe in your "recipe box" for easy recall.
So that can be somewhat time consuming. Especially if you just recently ate a big breakfast and you aren't hungry. Being hungry always makes making a meal plan go faster because you are more quick on your feet to think of things that sounds good. Try to think outside of the box and trust yourself that you can cook something, even if it sounds complicated. Chances are, it's not.
I try to always mix it up. Not more than 2 pasta dishes and not more than 2 chicken dinners in a week.
For example, here is my meal plan this week:
Monday- Chicken and Rice
(eaten at the Watkins house b/c we had a meeting)Tuesday- Poppyseed chicken cassarole
(normally I wouldn't make two chicken cassarole dishes in sequence, but it just worked out that way since the Freds are coming over and Tiff requested Baked Ziti- which I orginally had planned for Tuesday)Wednesday- Baked Ziti, cheesy garlic bread (
a la Tiff)
Thursday- roast and potatoes
Friday- Shabbat- Mexican themed- making chicken/beef quessadilas
Saturday- Off night (
but we may eat Sunday's dinner and then go out Sunday)
Sunday- Ribs, mac-n-cheese, mashed potatoes and homemade onion rings
* One thing that I JUST started doing is coupon clipping. How you incorporate this into your meal plan is you go through the circulars (we get ours on Wednesday) and the Sunday paper coupons and you note what is on sale at the surrounding grocerys stores. If ribeye steaks are $2.99 a pound, make steak that week. If Brisket is .99 cents a pound (which it is right now at Albertsons in GP), make brisket instead of roast. Look at what is on sale and build your meal plan that way. Like if you like berries and aren't super partial, grab rasberries instead of strawberries if they are cheaper. Also, you may see that Tom Thumb is having a better sale that week than Albertsons, so it is worth the extra 5 minute drive to do your shopping there. More on coupon cutting when I get better at it :) *
Okay, now that you've gotten your recipes together, now it's time to make a grocery list.
Go through each recipe and note what you are going to need to buy. I only make my grocery list 1 week at a time because I prefer to not freeze my meats. BUT sometimes I get good deals on buying chicken breasts in bulk, so then I freeze.
Then literally get up and look in your fridge and note the "staple" items that you need to get. For me it's usually apple juice, water, diet cokes, yogurt, fresh fruit, cheese, sandwich meat, etc.
Then look in the pantry for your staple items such as bread, chips, fruit snacks, crackers, etc. Did I mention I'm a sucker for fresh french bread? I've recently gotten obsessed with Walmart's fresh french bread that is pre-sliced. Oh it's delicious goodness! mmm....
Also, it's helpful to get one of those grocery list pads that have the magnet on the back and just keep it on the fridge because during the week when you run out of something that's not "normal" such as ketchup or you are about to run out of toilet paper or dish washer detergent. Mark it down as you are thinking about it so you won't forget.
Also, in the circulars that come in the mail on Wednesday (at least for those of you who live in GP), at the bottom of the Albertsons one is always at least 3 coupons. Last week there was a coupon for $5 off purchase of $50 or more and this week it is $10 off $100 or more. Also there is one for buy 1 pre-seasoned steak and get 2 free. Hello! Free money! Get that!
Okay, so that's how I stay organized as far as the cooking aspect goes. I'll write more on how I've finally learned (as I have been forced to learn b/c of selling the house) how to keep my house basically clean and also how to stay caught up with laundry.
But until then, I hope the meal plan tutorial helped :)