Organizing | Organized Dinner Planning & Grocery Shopping, continued

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Organized Dinner Planning and Grocery Shopping - pg. 2
by Brandie Valenzuela

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Step 3 - With your list of meals, write down on a sheet of paper what meals your family will eat for your time period. In my case, I write the days of the week, since I shop weekly. If you do more than a week at a time, you may want to write the actual dates. I also use my grocery store ads at this time. If I noticed a great deal on chicken, I may purposely plan a dinner with chicken -- and visa versa, if no chicken is one sale (and I don't have any in my freezer) we will not be eating chicken that week. I also make sure to not to serve any two "categories" of meals on two nights in a row (for example, we will not eat tacos on Monday and Burritos on Tuesday).

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HINT: Be sure to look at your families calendar when deciding what meals to prepare. On nights that I know we will be home late, I plan easy meals or meals which I can prepare ahead of time.

Step 4 - Next to each meal I wrote, I list the ingredients that will need to purchase for that meal. If we are having cheeseburgers, I will look to see what I do have and then I will list everything else I don't have that I need to buy.

Step 5 - Now that you have your meals listed with the ingredients that you need to purchase, you are ready to go to the store. However, if you shop for more than one week at a time, I recommend that you prepare yet another list - on this list you will want to list your needed groceries under heading such as produce, canned foods, frozen foods, etc.

By following these steps, you will be on your way to more organized meal planning and grocery shopping. Now the trick is just to stick to it!

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About the Author:
Brandie Valenzuela is the editor of Scrapbooking with Brandie.

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