Meal Planning and Grocery List

My husband and I are working on saving money and eating healthier by eating out less. We have tried meal planning in different ways before, but since we are getting more serious about it, I saw an idea on Pinterest and went for it!

I was thinking of selling this on my Etsy shop [savannahPcards], but because I copied the format from another organizer, I decided it would not be okay to profit off of this! So I am writing here instead – because I am still very proud of how it turned out! [If you would like your own, click this link and purchase hers!]

Usually we focus on planning dinner for my family, because we buy the same sorts of things for breakfast and lunch each week. With this strategy, you plan your meals on the same page as the shopping list.

And if you plan for more than a week in advance, you can print out multiple sheets.

I am thinking I’ll print a new one each week, but to be more environmentally friendly, you could print once on cardstock and either laminate or put in a plastic cover and use a dry erase marker to reuse. My issue with that was dragging around a laminated full-page to the grocery store, because I tend to fold my shopping lists enough that I can fit in a purse or pocket.

Here’s a bigger picture!

I customized it by how I shop.

• Produce is when you first walk in our grocery store, and it’s the biggest section because we buy a lot of produce. Its box is green, because that’s the color produce makes me think of.
• Shelves is the next largest section because there are a lot of shelves. However, we don’t buy as much from here. Noodles, sauce, beans, cereal, etc. The pink outline has no meaning : )
• Bulk/natural is included because we shop at a store with an included Health Market. We buy things like chia seeds in bulk, coconut oil in natural, etc. We certainly don’t buy much here, but it was worth adding. Its outline is brown because nature/natural is brown in my book! (Since I already used green.)
• Meat is slightly bigger. We buy our dinner meats from the meat counter section. Outline is red.
• Dairy is decent-sized because we buy a lot of dairy. Milk, cheese, cheese sticks, yogurt, eggs, taco shells, tea, ham… The outline is yellow kind of like cheese/egg yolks.
• Frozen is blue, and we buy a lot of frozen veggies and sometimes some ice cream or some treat.
• Non-food would be like dog food, trash bags, pharmaceuticals, etc. The outline is black.

Could also include a deli section, but we don’t buy anything from there.

How would you make your list customized for your needs?

Dusting, polishing, disinfecting list

Now, I don’t go along dusting/cleaning/disinfecting each individual item and then checking it off. I do a room at a time, or all of one thing at a time, before checking anything off. Example: Disinfect all the light switches in the house in a row. 

I made this spreadsheet a long time ago so I’d be sure to remember to do everything. Also, it feels awesome to check off the whole sheet.

For the record, I do not dust all of those things, clean all of the glass, and disinfect everything on that list weekly. I tend to not even do it monthly. These three things are on my cleaning list at the bottom where I write when I last did it, and when I’ll next do it. It’s kind of a play-it-by-ear type of thing. Anything that needs done (example: the glass in our front door gets dirty easily and might get cleaned more often. This list is for the DEEP CLEAN.

I decided what to add to the dusting list by what gets dusty, and the glass list by what is made of glass. The disinfect list is what gets touched. Some of the things, like the breaker handle in the laundry room, is almost never touched. I might decide that I don’t want to clean everything on the list and I don’t beat myself up about it if I don’t. Usually I check it off anyway or draw a minus sign through it to indicate that I did not do it and do not intend to.

Lastly, I’ll say that I keep this list in a sheet protector in my main household binder (another post on that later) so I can use a dry erase marker and just erase easily when everything has been X’ed off.

Do you use lists to remember everything you have to do? Or for the satisfaction of crossing things off when you’re finished?

Keeping your online sales organized

To keep track of what I am selling and where, I made a spreadsheet.

Column A is the list of items (bold items are general categories; each category is separated by thicker lines.)
Column B is the starting price.
Columns C-I are places I have listed for sale. The bold dates are the original posting for that item, and non-bolded dates are the most recent “bump”.
Column J is how many bumps, so I know that I’ve tried. Some communities only allow bumps every so often.
Column K: When I will next bump.
Column L will be to show what has sold and possibly when.
Column M is when I’ll give up on selling the item.
Column N is where the item will go if it does not sell by the date in column M.

This makes for an END IN SIGHT, helping me feel better about the amount of boxes and things that I need to get rid of.