The last few months, I've been trying to be better about making healthy, intentional meals. When we first got Anna, we were eating a lot of freezer meals that I'd made previously as well as eating out or at our parents' homes. We were trying to adjust to life with a newborn and I had little time for meal planning or cooking or even thinking about it! Now that life has settled into a routine, I knew I had to readdress the issue of meals.
You see, I love to cook. I hate to clean up... I like my kitchen to be spotless and when I cook I often feel like it explodes and I'm left with a giant mess to clean up. Dishes are my least favorite chore, they seem to never stop coming! So I needed to devise some way to enjoy cooking dinner for my family, save us money on groceries, incorporate food for Anna, and make minimal mess!
So meal planning was my solution. You might be thinking "duh" but it's something that overwhelmed me. Why would I decide what I'm going to have for dinner 3 weeks from now? That seems crazy, how do I gather all of those ingredients?
So here's what I do. It works and I like it. A lot.
- We grocery shop once a month, on or around payday. Aside from the short trips for milk, we try to stay away from the grocery store. The longer I'm in there, the more I pick up, and the more money we spend.
- A few days before the big grocery shopping event I make a menu. I have a few cookbooks, including one that my mom and I have compiled of family recipes. I try to find recipes that have similar ingredients, and I also try to find ones with ingredients that are on sale that week. For instance, if one thing uses pork, I buy pork chops in bulk (on sale) and find other recipes that utilize pork in a different way. This may sound like our meals are boring, but I make sure I'm creative to avoid that. When I find a recipe, I write it down on the calendar and I write down where the recipe was from, what page it's on, and then add the ingredients to my grocery list. I throw in a few leftover days on the weekends usually (although Jeremy likes leftovers for lunches) and Fridays are homemade pizza days and I account for any days I don't need to make dinner (this month there were a lot!).
- An organized list is key to my system. So I use excel. I sort everything by group (I know the aisles in the grocery store so they're pretty much sorted by aisle). As I find recipes and add them to the calendar, I add the ingredients (that I don't already have on hand) to the list. This organized list has saved me from forgetting things and being all over the store at any given time.
- All month I've cut coupons from the paper and online sources (our printer's out of ink at the moment, so my coupon supply was down this month) and I sort the coupons by section (the same as my list sections).
- I match my coupons to my list and put them in an envelop. With my list, my coupons, my list manager (Jer), and my grabber-off-the-shelfer (Anna :-)) safely tucked in the Mei Tai, we head to the stores. We go to Sa.m's Club first and pick up the things we need in bulk. This saves us a lot of money (especially on formula). Then we go to Meij.er. After a long evening of shopping and countless people telling us how adorable our baby is and countless people laughing at how loud she is, we check out and head home.
- When we get home, we put it all away and I begin making meals. We went grocery shopping last night, so I made meals today during naptimes. I prep and/or freeze whatever I can. For instance, today I made: chili, lasagna soup, prepped pork chops for a maple pork chop recipe, pureed peas, sweet potatoes, pears, avocado, squash and bananas for Anna, chopped veggies for minestrone and corn chowder (apparently I was in a soup mood, I'm ready for fall...) and pesto.
- Each day I look at the next day's menu, being sure to set out anything from the freezer I need, and meal time is easy peasy!
And that is how I make a big mess all at once and my kitchen is clean for the rest of the month! And my family's eating healthy! And my baby girl always has homemade food on hand!
Showing posts with label saving money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saving money. Show all posts
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
More Natural
Over the last year, Jer and I have worked at making things around our home more natural. I guess you could say we're "going green". However, most of the things we're doing started with the intent of saving money. Adopting an infant is not a cheap endeavor. Insurance covers none of it and (with the exception of friends and family) there is no one really to "help you out." Since adoption became as priority for us, so did our budget, and with that came an effort to cut costs in many ways. While saving money was a reason for most of these things, there are other reasons too, like sensitive skin and allergies. However, I certainly like the fact that we're worked to make our family more natural. Here's a list of a few things we've been doing to save some money and make our family more natural.
1) Cloth diapers!
This is at the top of the list because it was probably the biggest investment, but also the biggest return. I absolutely love our cloth diapers. We started buying a few a month after we were licensed to adopt in order to make less of a dramatic impact on our wallet. We stocked up during some sales as well. We have just now reached a point where where (as opposed to disposables) we've saved money. For the first few months of Anna's life, we technically didn't save anything with the investment we put into it. However, with the cost of diapers where it is, we would be saving money right about now. We have enough diapers to last a few days and will not have to buy a single diaper for baby #2 when the time comes.
Not to mention, the fact that I know the materials sitting against Anna's bum and she has yet to get any diaper rash. They're easy to clean and I throw them in with her regular baby laundry. So I don't do any extra laundry because of them! I could go on and on about how much I love them, but I'll spare you and just say I'm so happy we made that decision. Oh yeah, and my favorite part... no stinky poopy smells sitting around in my trash can for a week!
2) Composting
This was more of a way for us to simply reduce stinky trash. For so long there was just the two of us. It took a whole week to fill a trash can in our kitchen which is nice because trash pick-up is once a week. However, that also meant banana peels and apple cores and onion outsides?? were sitting aroudn in my trash can making it stink. Talk about a bad smell! So we decided to do something constructive with them, bought a cheap compost bin and started putting all of our scraps in it. We also have a lot of yard waste due to some beautiful landscaping that came with the house and excessive amounts of trees and leaves. So it works wonderfully and now it's been baout 8 months and we're just starting to see some wonderful compost that will really be great for our flowers, especially since I'm really good at killing plants!
3) Norwex
A friend of ours recently became a Norwex consultant, selling environmentally friendly cleaning products that are chemical free, but antibacterial, and just use water. I LOVE my Norwex cloths. I use them for pretty much everything and I love knowing that I am not using chemicals to clean around my house. I have gotten rid of all cleaners and since I'm a compulsive cleaner, my house smells so much better and is just if not more clean! They also have body cloths that pretty much eliminate my need for soap as well, they're better for your skin and clean as well, without the soap scum! And they're still antibacterial! And it's saved us a lot of money as I bought a lot of cleaners since I"m a little psycho about cleaning my home...
4) Shampoo/Soap
Speaking of soap... I've stopped using the regular shampoos and conditioners. I now use baking soda/water as shampoo and vinegar/water as conditioner. This wasn't that much of a drastic idea to me as I've always had scalp issues. As a kid, my mom would give me a good rinse with vinegar every few weeks to really get all of the chemical/other stuff out of my hair. It essentially strips your hair and allows your natural oils to rebalance themselves. This tremenously helped my scalp as a kid and contiues to do so now. It makes it so that I don't have to wash my hair every day and can simply rinse it every other day (I'm one of those people that NEEDS to have a shower every day, simply to wake me up). My hair is much softer and less frizzy and it just feels clean. And not to mention, with hair as thick as mine, I go through shampoo quickly and franky vinegar and baking soda are way cheaper!
I also know that Anna has sensitive skin and so we use very little baby soap/shampoo on her, but the stuff we use is totally natural and while it's expensive, we've gone through a quarter of a bottle in like a month and a half. It's worth it to me to hav eher hair nice and soft and not wiry and to have her skin stay soft. We also use a really hard core lotion on her to keep her skin soft, when I don't do it well enough, you can definitely tell on her skin!
5) Laundry
Really the last way we've made a major change to a more natural way is with our laundry. Much of this was spurred by a need to wash cloth diapers in a detergent free of lots of things. At first it seemed more expensive, but I've quickly learned that's not true. The one box of the natural detergent I use was purchased at the same time as the generic regular detergent bottle that cost 2x as much. The generic bottle is just running out and the Planet detergent box hardly shows a dent. I only have to use a teaspoon of it in our machine and it's going to last us for a LONG time!
We also no longer use any fabric softeners/dryer sheets at all. I never realized how bad they are for your skin, until learning about cloth diapers. My skin is so much better, it's always been sensitive to things and I've noticed a huge different. And I don't have to worry about Anna's skin this way. Saves us money on products and saves us money on skin issues!
So basically we've tried to elminate chemicals and use natural alternatives. Fortunately in these cases, the natural alternatives are much cheaper and so much better for us!
1) Cloth diapers!
This is at the top of the list because it was probably the biggest investment, but also the biggest return. I absolutely love our cloth diapers. We started buying a few a month after we were licensed to adopt in order to make less of a dramatic impact on our wallet. We stocked up during some sales as well. We have just now reached a point where where (as opposed to disposables) we've saved money. For the first few months of Anna's life, we technically didn't save anything with the investment we put into it. However, with the cost of diapers where it is, we would be saving money right about now. We have enough diapers to last a few days and will not have to buy a single diaper for baby #2 when the time comes.
Not to mention, the fact that I know the materials sitting against Anna's bum and she has yet to get any diaper rash. They're easy to clean and I throw them in with her regular baby laundry. So I don't do any extra laundry because of them! I could go on and on about how much I love them, but I'll spare you and just say I'm so happy we made that decision. Oh yeah, and my favorite part... no stinky poopy smells sitting around in my trash can for a week!
2) Composting
This was more of a way for us to simply reduce stinky trash. For so long there was just the two of us. It took a whole week to fill a trash can in our kitchen which is nice because trash pick-up is once a week. However, that also meant banana peels and apple cores and onion outsides?? were sitting aroudn in my trash can making it stink. Talk about a bad smell! So we decided to do something constructive with them, bought a cheap compost bin and started putting all of our scraps in it. We also have a lot of yard waste due to some beautiful landscaping that came with the house and excessive amounts of trees and leaves. So it works wonderfully and now it's been baout 8 months and we're just starting to see some wonderful compost that will really be great for our flowers, especially since I'm really good at killing plants!
3) Norwex
A friend of ours recently became a Norwex consultant, selling environmentally friendly cleaning products that are chemical free, but antibacterial, and just use water. I LOVE my Norwex cloths. I use them for pretty much everything and I love knowing that I am not using chemicals to clean around my house. I have gotten rid of all cleaners and since I'm a compulsive cleaner, my house smells so much better and is just if not more clean! They also have body cloths that pretty much eliminate my need for soap as well, they're better for your skin and clean as well, without the soap scum! And they're still antibacterial! And it's saved us a lot of money as I bought a lot of cleaners since I"m a little psycho about cleaning my home...
4) Shampoo/Soap
Speaking of soap... I've stopped using the regular shampoos and conditioners. I now use baking soda/water as shampoo and vinegar/water as conditioner. This wasn't that much of a drastic idea to me as I've always had scalp issues. As a kid, my mom would give me a good rinse with vinegar every few weeks to really get all of the chemical/other stuff out of my hair. It essentially strips your hair and allows your natural oils to rebalance themselves. This tremenously helped my scalp as a kid and contiues to do so now. It makes it so that I don't have to wash my hair every day and can simply rinse it every other day (I'm one of those people that NEEDS to have a shower every day, simply to wake me up). My hair is much softer and less frizzy and it just feels clean. And not to mention, with hair as thick as mine, I go through shampoo quickly and franky vinegar and baking soda are way cheaper!
I also know that Anna has sensitive skin and so we use very little baby soap/shampoo on her, but the stuff we use is totally natural and while it's expensive, we've gone through a quarter of a bottle in like a month and a half. It's worth it to me to hav eher hair nice and soft and not wiry and to have her skin stay soft. We also use a really hard core lotion on her to keep her skin soft, when I don't do it well enough, you can definitely tell on her skin!
5) Laundry
Really the last way we've made a major change to a more natural way is with our laundry. Much of this was spurred by a need to wash cloth diapers in a detergent free of lots of things. At first it seemed more expensive, but I've quickly learned that's not true. The one box of the natural detergent I use was purchased at the same time as the generic regular detergent bottle that cost 2x as much. The generic bottle is just running out and the Planet detergent box hardly shows a dent. I only have to use a teaspoon of it in our machine and it's going to last us for a LONG time!
We also no longer use any fabric softeners/dryer sheets at all. I never realized how bad they are for your skin, until learning about cloth diapers. My skin is so much better, it's always been sensitive to things and I've noticed a huge different. And I don't have to worry about Anna's skin this way. Saves us money on products and saves us money on skin issues!
So basically we've tried to elminate chemicals and use natural alternatives. Fortunately in these cases, the natural alternatives are much cheaper and so much better for us!
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