Sustainable Life
with Bibi
In general, I'm a crunchy granola mom (sometimes read: hippie) with no specific philosophy on life. Our family makes it from month to month with my husband working full time as a teacher, and me staying home full time with our daughter, while taking in paid jobs as they come my way. The family budget is tight, but we try to do our part to clean up our lifestyle and our planet.
To learn more about Bibi, check out her profile on Work It, Mom! and her personal blog, Mamasense.
This past week I’ve been getting super into my new organizational system and have even begun building a binder to help keep our home on auto-pilot. I’ve included lists of all of my daily routines (complete with sheet protectors and dry erase markers to allow me to check things off as they get done) and have started to include tasks that are to be done weekly. I’m loving it so far. It’s all basically via the FLYlady website, but I’ve added a few touches of my own to make it work better for our family.
So many times I’ve envied my friends and family member who seem to have it all together with little to no effort. I’m starting to get the hang of this organization stuff, though.
There’s a big BUT coming. Could you feel it? BUT I am hung up on two things. One is that I would really love to have a stocked pantry, and I’ve heard tons of tips on how to stock you pantry so that you have the things you need on hand all the time…but I’m wondering if any real people actually do that, and how it works for them. And the other thing that is holding me up is menu planning. My husband and I used to be great at menu planning. We would make a menu buy the groceries for said menu and then eat all but one or two of the meals. It would be too hard, or it wouldn’t sound good, etc. etc. I want to get our household running more smoothly and find a way to get grocery shopping done on one day every week, but right now that seems like an insurmountable task.
Pregnancy is not my friend when it comes to meals either. I might plan a few nice dinners, and when it comes time to make them I’m too tired, or nothing sounds good. My husband cringes when I utter the words “What do you want for dinner?” these days, because I usually shoot down all his ideas and we have something completely different.
Needless to say, our grocery situation is chaotic right now, and I’d like to get it down to a manageable roar. How does your family organize grocery shopping? Does anyone have a grocery system that they can’t live without?
Subscribe to blog via RSS
Oh, honey, I think I love the flylady. When I read the first few lines of this entry, I knew you were into her, too :).
About the pantry: yes, I’ve kept a stocked pantry. Nothing huge, just things like baking supplies and pasta and spaghetti sauce and canned veggies. I have also always kept some chicken breasts and a few pounds of ground meat in the freezer (at the very least). I guess that’s what you’re meaning(?) Honestly, it would make me a complete basket case NOT to live like that.
If you are just starting to build a stocked pantry, don’t go whole hog. Next time you get a can of beans, say, pick up an extra can or two. (NOTE: only do this if your family actually eats beans in a lot of your recipes. Otherwise, you’ll just waste space.) Slowly, you’ll build up a nice “reserve” that you can dip into and avoid last-minute trips.
And here’s my tip for menu planning: STOP PLANNING “NICE” DINNERS! You are pregnant! Cut yourself some slack! Plan simple dinners, like spaghetti. Use your crockpot so you don’t have to do a lot of work in the evening. I’ll post or send you some easy recipes if you’re interested.
And one last thing: grocery shopping. At my most organized, I had a list of commonly-used grocery items. They were grouped by area of store (dairy, produce, etc) and even by aisle (baking goods, etc). And get this: the order went IN ORDER from the back to the front of the store I most commonly used. I had a little blank next to each item like this “__ spinach.” I’d write in the number of boxes of frozen spinach we needed. (You like how I’m trying to make myself sound all healthy, instead of listing “__ Little Debbie snacks”? Yeah, I thought so.) I left blanks in each category for less commonly used items to be written in. I’d print up a list, smack it on the fridge, and fill it out as we ran out of stuff and as I planned the meals.
OK, so yeah, getting that list together by aisle took one rough draft, a trip to the store where I marked up the rough draft, and an edit. Done. Seriously saved me time and money.
You can do this, kid. BABYSTEPS ;)!
Just me | March 12th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Stocking the pantry takes time. Don’t do it until after you move, or you’ll have to move the entire contents of your pantry/closet. Mine is a back hallway with lots of shelves. You’ll figure out what kind of staples you need and replace them as you use them. We keep canned soups, canned fruits, pastas, and chili fixins, among other goodies. We’re not so good at menu planning, though. That’s a goal I’ll tackle when summer comes and I’m home from school.
Daisy | March 14th, 2009 at 5:42 pm