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I’m excited today not only to share another Grocery Haul, but to also share some sneak peak printable's from my upcoming eBook “MEAL PLANNING MADE SIMPLE” covering at HOME, LUNCHBOX, VACATIONS, CHRISTMAS, BIRTHDAYS & EASTER. The eBook is designed to help busy mums make life that little more simple during a otherwise time consuming task. Meal Planning can cut hours and $$$ off your meal preparation & grocery shopping.
> Get your FREE MONTHLY MEAL PLANNING 3PK here
I constantly have people ask me about my meal planning, grocery budgets and what I do to simplify it all. If you have read my Simple Meal Planning For Beginners post it covers a basic list of steps in what to do to get you started . My new book will go into more depth for you to really get the benefits out of Meal Planning for your family, giving you tips & tricks to take the stress and time out of weekly meal cooking and grocery shopping. I also go into meal planning for Vacations, Christmas , Birthday Party's and Easter! Why the extra ? Planning these special occasions are all so different from each other and your usual home meal planning. I give you the tools and information to plan for each. So stay subscribed to be the first to know when the eBook comes out towards the end of this year!
So let's talk Monthly Meal Planning! If you don't know already I actually love grocery shopping (am I weird?), but life's so busy now with a 6yr old at school, a active 1yr old, running businesses from home and just running the house and life in general . I started Meal Planning over 2 years ago when Joseph started kinder and now have it working for me to truely make my life more simple. I would rather simplify all the daily 'work' tasks and instead use that time for spending QUALITY time with my husband and children as a family. Meal planning has cut unnecessary hours out of my week and it can for you too!
I've done it all.... weekly Meal Planning, fortnightly and monthly. The thing I found that benefits me is that doing it monthly rather than weekly I save a lot more money! Shopping for weeks at a time I find you can buy more in bulk to save in the budget eg meats lasting multiple meals over a month. If I shop weekly I spend around $140 for a family of 4 and that's including EVERYTHING for the house ... food, toiletries , nappies, baby friendly foods etc . If I do it monthly I spend around $400 > $300 initially for the start and then $20-$25 per week I have set aside for fresh fruit/veg I may need it any other things that may pop up. So over a month I save approx $160 shopping monthly! At first I thought it was pointless doing monthly as I would be going for fresh items anyway weekly, but once I realized the $$$ savings I turned to monthly shops. For us this is more beneficial. Plus even going for the extra each week will take less than 20 minutes out of my day as it's only a few things needed.
My actual Meal Planning for a MONTH I now have down to around 45 minutes. That includes deciding main meals, school lunchbox meal planning, snacks & calculating an estimated cost using my Grocery Calculator. I follow the basic steps I've listed in my other blog post plus a few extras like adding in new recipes to try (no more than 1 new recipe per week is my rule). My actual monthly shop out can take 1-2 hours depending on how I've done it. In the case of my current monthly haul I actually ordered online some of my list with Coles Click And Collect to save time & avoid having to take Isabella (1yr) into two grocery stores. The rest I shopped at ALDI. Total shopping time was under a hour! So in all for the next 4 weeks I look forward to the extra time I have to enjoy with my family.
If you want to give monthly Meal Planning a try GET THE FREE MONTHLY MEAL PLANNING 3pk here. If your new to Meal Planning read the basics here first on my SIMPLE MEAL PLANNING FOR BEGINNERS post.
Comment below if you do meal planning and any tips and tricks you may have.
