School is in, and I am finding that I need to tighten things that I have let slip over the summer. Perhaps some of you are finding the same thing.
One of the areas that always trips us up is the constancy of food preparation. Choosing what to have for each meal is a mind-draining exercise. How do we streamline that? Several moms that I have talked to have sought to save time and money on this effort, to good effect.
The most obvious one is to plan what you are going to do for the week ahead, and then to shop for that plan. One mom puts the schedule for both breakfast and lunch on the refrigerator door. That way her children can see exactly what they are going to have, and they are either resigned or excited about the offerings of the day. For instance, Wednesdays [breakfast] are always eggs and some kind of meat, while Thursdays are always oatmeal, etc. That cuts down on complaints, as well as her having to think about what to fix. Making her shopping list is easier, too.
Dinner, or supper, then, is the only variable, and most moms that I know have an arsenal of family recipes that can be fixed quickly and efficiently, as well as being mostly thrifty. I used to get caught up in the need to add variety to my family’s life, but after a while, I realized that not only do I save money by having two weeks of thrifty meals that I can recycle, but that my family loved having certain meals again and again. So then I could save my splurges and time-consuming recipes for special events or company meals.
My grandfather was an “efficiency expert” in the early days of the 20th century, and my mother was a beneficiary of his expertise in many ways. Cutting out minutes here, and steps there, really adds up….and who can’t use extra time? 😉
As usual, it all comes back to planning and consistency. May God grant you grace for both!
