Meal planning is the heart of our grocery lists, specifically for dinner where extra is made for brownbag lunches. Breakfasts will be a rotation of 2-3 things that mostly are pantry items, like cereal or oatmeal, and supplement with fresh fruit, milk and other dairy items (butter, cottage cheese/yogurt). Pantry is organized to allow a quick glance to see if we are out of a particular class of item, and never overbuy to overflow that item into where another thing belongs (i.e. only 2-3 boxes of cereal, so we don’t run into where the soup belongs).
Get a whiteboard for the kitchen and put on it four columns:
1) Days of the week
2) Who will be home for dinner that evening? (ie do you have time to cook, how many to feed)
3) What is already in the freezer, fridge and pantry?
4) Based on the info 1-3, plan meals for the week.
Update the board every week and make a list. Go through all your local grocery fliers to see what is in season/on sale. THEN go grocery shopping.
There is the one time cost of purging, inventorying and organizing the freezer, pantry and fridge the first time. (Which you probably need to do weekly anyway for trash night.) But then you add items to the board as you put groceries away. Voila. Now meal planning takes 15 min a week, and you will never overbuy/throw out food again. Better yet you can avoid wasting energy opening and closing the fridge and freezer to see what is in them, you just consult the whiteboard.
And to counteract any whining about how much work this is, I offer the following: How much money and time are you wasting throwing out expired food? Or wandering around the grocery store not knowing what you want?
