Hey guys so I usually do my grocery run about once a week. I wanted to show you how I do that. How it saves me time, why it really isn't that stressful, and veering away from the meal plan some times helps us stretch out our food to last longer than a week. Something about rules and schedules being set in stone and super strict on my life makes me want to bolt and revolt on the plan. I like being able to freelance and kind of do whatever is easiest. Trying to make meals planned for exact days gives extra fuss to the whole thing.
After my meals are "planned", I go through each meal and write down the ingredients I need, all while I'm taking a mental inventory of what we have on hand. I'm a pen & paper kind of gal when it comes to this. I have tried utilizing a nice Excel spreadsheet. Perfect columns. Super Organized. BOLD letters and underlined categories.... Yea no, not for me. Ill take my chicken scratch handwriting and misspelled ingredients all day over a perfectly created spreadsheet I spent a few hours putting together. Here is what my typical meal plan layout looks like. I have my grocery list laid out like the grocery store and that helps save a lot of time. I'm sure I sound like Monica off of friends, but when I'm battling with 3 tiny independent, strong-willed females....Every second counts in those godforsaken grocery stores that put every stuffed animal, every Disney princess, and every chocolate at tiny human eye level. So when say I operate at optimum efficiency 30 hours a day 10 days a week...I mean it. This truly helps and makes shopping way less frustrating. With that being said we travel full time so we don't really have the chance to learn a grocery store or have a local store.