I Lied!

I am not doing any organizing today except menus and grocery planning. All other organizing is procrastinated until next week. We will be having a staycation/vacation for the next few days so while we will be home sorta and close to home, I will not be posting. Instead I will be having fun with my family. In order for this to be somewhat economical, I will have to do alot of food planning. I'll still probably be around in the morning though, so I might post if something really profound hits me.

With menus and food planning on my brain, I thought I might post a bit about that. I think I have mentioned before that I seldom go to Walmart because of my poor impulse buy control. I prefer to do all of my shopping at Kroger. I go to www.kroger.com and find my store, click on the specials, make my list and then print it. I also do the same at our local grocery-sometimes their specials beat the snot out of Kroger and it isn't as though I am traveling out of my way. Then I go to www.cvs.com and www.walgreens.com to check for any toiletries/snacks/drinks/etc that are going for CHEEP. If I see deals, I drop by there before the grocery. There is usually always something worthwhile at one of those spots and it only takes a minute to save alot of dough. Sometimes, especially at Walgreens, it may be in the form of a rebate-but I don't mind. I get it put on my rebate card and just use it in place of cash at one of my visits. CVS has extra value bucks that are not good on today's visit but on your next visit. Using those, sometimes I leave with a full bag of lots of stuff that only cost me a few dollars plus my coupon cash. I also utilize the farmers market right now for my produce needs. It is an awesome way to save money on fresh produce and also fuel our local economy!

It works out to be a pretty good system for us. I usually spend anywhere from $150-250 every two weeks for my family of 5. That includes school supplies, toiletries etc. We are recovering eating-out-aholics and that has saved us a ton of money. Even hubby has stopped eating out so much and takes leftovers from supper for lunch. Good thing I am such an awesome cook.

Most important is the menu planning. Without it, we are tempted to snack more and use the supplies needed for meals on snacks. If I post a menu though, everyone seems content to look forward to the meal coming up and snack on snacks-which are usually fresh fruit, cheese, yogurt, pretzels or dry cereal. Since my new diet change, I almost always have a homemade dessert every day. It has definitely reduced our cravings for "junk" food. German chocolate cake costs about $2 and will feed all of us dessert for about 3 days. Apple dumplings cost about $4 and provide dessert for 2 days. That is way cheaper and better for you that little debbie. Homemade sugar cookies and chocolate oatmeal cookies are even cheaper than that and last alot longer.

Hopefully this either helps someone or labels me the complete food control freak that I am.