Household Planner

My main goal was the make a meal planner but i decided to add schedules and chores into it as well. I'm working on getting my food budget down even more then it is and also making meal planning easier. So this is my attempt at getting organized!

This is my old binder, it use to be my coupon binder and now it's become the household planner :)

I downloaded a bunch of planner template pages but in the end i decided to make my own in OneNote.

Pages i made were:

• Weekly Meal Plan

• Freezer Inventory
• Pantry Inventory
• Leftovers 
• (To keep track of what i have so i can incorporate it into meals plans)
• Prepared Meals 
• (I'm going to work on preparing meals ahead of time whether fresh or frozen)
• Shopping List
• Meal Ideas 
• (This is a master list of meals that we like to eat)
• Meal Ingredients Master List 
• (A break down of most of all the meals we like to cook and what goes in them for easier shopping list making)
• Daily Schedule

• Whole House Cleaning Chart
• (A break down of each room of the house and a list of what generally needs to get cleaned)

Then i made a 'Recipes' section for me to save recipes in. The sections i made for that area was:

• Breakfasts
• Snacks
• Main Dishes

• Side Dishes
• Desserts
• Breads
• Freezer / Crock Pot Meals

I'm so hoping this will help my life get a little easier! I'm still fairly new to meal planning. I use to do it for awhile a year or so ago when i was shopping for a whole month. I got out of the routine for a long time and now that i decided to switch it to weekly shopping i feel like i'm starting all over again. Since i'm about to have baby #3 in a little over a month i really am going to try to do some frozen meal and see how it works for me.

I recently read a blog where this lady was writing about how little money she lives off of and she said her family of 4 average about $400 a month in food budget. I have been budgeting $400 for food and any toiletries for years and it has worked pretty good. For a minute i felt good about myself since this lady and her followers thought $400 for 4 for a month was great, but then it inspired me to push and try harder to get that amount down even more. This last month shopping weekly and meal planning according to what i have on hand, what is on ad match and what goes along with coupon deals i was able to get that $400 down to about $370. Plus i am pretty confident i can get it down even more.

I'm going to work on making more stuff homemade. I go in swings, doing great making more homemade things like bagels and bread and things and then i fall out of it. I need to just get in the habit of doing it! I plan on making some things like scrambled egg muffins and pancake muffins and freezing them so i can just pull a few out here and there and have breakfast already made. I'm just trying to brain storm and come up with things that will make my life easier with this upcoming newborn.

It's a challenge and i'm looking forward to it!

If any of you have ways you cut your food budget down please comment and let me know :)