Meal Planning Binder Checked Off the List!

Goals, goals, glorious goals…I’m really getting into this! With one week behind us, I have accomplished quite a bit. I am hoping I can maintain this momentum – gulp!

The first goal I had was to make and use a meal planning binder. Afterall, what's the sense of making one if you aren't going to use it?

Duh!

I honestly didn't know where to start with this so I did what any rational thinking woman would do - I jumped on the world wide web! As I clicked here and there, I began to hyperventilate at the plethora of ideas. Everything was so inspiring and I found myself wishing I was "good enough" to accomplish what someone else implemented in their home. My favs were Bold turquoise (where I stole borrowed my cover from – she said we could!), The Nest Effect, and The Creative Place. All of these sites use the same basic concept but there are many, many more ideas out there. Just google it, check out the blogs you already follow, or head over to pintrest. I’m not on there, but I’m gonna guess that it is full of meal planning organization ideas for all the fun, crafty people of the world.

Am I right?

I thought so.

Anyway, as I was looking at these ideas, I realized that I could never be so cool. I don’t have it in me. I am simply not wired with the creative, crafty gene. Additionally, I felt that these ideas all took things to the extreme. Not in a bad or negative way…just more than I know I could handle. I don’t have the time to keep the binder nice, neat, and organized. I just wanted to keep it simple. So I took the basic idea and made it mine. Here is what I did:

I found an old binder laying around my house and I printed a cover. I’m too cheap to go all fancy with color so I kept mine black and white. Boring, I know. But trust me - it fits me.

Then I printed some weekly menus and grocery lists. Here are some fun printables from Design Finch if you are interested. Mine actually came from here. 

Then I assembled my book.

I printed out a piece of paper with the name of the month and some cheesy clip art and stuck it in a sleeve protector. I used Post-It dividers for each month to separate things easily and included 4-5 weekly menus for each month. I have a pouch folder at the end of the current month so that I can keep any loose recipes I have pulled. I keep the grocery lists in the back of the binder and just fill them out weekly.

I made my menu for January – breakfast and dinner - and then pulled all of the recipes and put them in my binder (mine were already in sheet protectors because I am weird like that). By doing this, I have all the recipes I will be using in one place. That sounds like a big project, right? It actually only took me about an hour to plan and pull recipes for the entire month. I have been thankful that I invested that time because now I have the recipes ready, literally at my fingertips, when I am ready for them. I made a note of the things we will be using a lot of and things that can be used for multiple recipes (and planned accordingly) so I can be looking for sales and coupons.

Each week, I will put the used recipes back where they belong and plan for the next week in succession so that I always have 4 weeks planned in advance. This also helps so that I don’t repeat recipes too often. I know a lot of people are okay with a two week rotation but I get bored with the same ole, same ole so I like to change it up. Sometimes it drives my family crazy, but in the end, they appreciate the variety.

That’s it! I told you I kept it simple...and I can check this goal off my list. I know I will use this method consistently because of its simplicity. Now on to the next goal – planning Ryan’s grad party.

Well – what do you say we skip that one this week? I made no progress here...haven't even picked a date.

{shame}

On to operation photo organization! I made a tiny bit of progress here. Remember that box I showed you last week?

Well, here is what it looks like today...pictures separated by child, all neat and tidy.

Not too shabby, huh? I even threw away pictures (shh…and thank you Aurie for the encouragement to do so!). Who needs 10 of the same picture? Or a picture of your kid doing something silly…or six of them from different angles and ranges? Yea…not me!

Next I will be working on the boxes in the hall closet. I don’t think they are too bad, but there are several of them. Then we are on to the totes - yes, big, blue totes stuffed full of pictures. I can’t say that I am looking forward to that!

What have you been up to?

Keepin’ it Real…D