Easy Meal Organization

A couple things to share today, so two posts! I know, it's a big day. Not only am I posting more than once in a week, I'm doubling up on posts in a day. lol.

I am first going to show you my attempt at being organized food-wise. When things start getting busy, I'm very bad at remembering to cook dinner. Which ends up with us either eating out or eating ramen noodles with canned chicken, peas and corn. Or sometimes I just skip dinner because I don't want to cook something and I don't want to eat one of Jeff's variations of ramen with canned chicken, peas and corn. Not very good, I know...

Sometimes I have time to make something, but we don't have all the ingredients for the meals that sound good to me, and we're back to the ramen-or-nothing scenario. Sad.

I am also notorious for buying something and forgetting it's in the fridge until we find it a week later in an inedible state. (Although part of that I blame on Smith's not-that-fresh produce.)

I've tried to make menus before, but figuring out what to make and all the food we need for the week hasn't been that successful. I'm good for about a week, and then I forget or I put off making the menu for the week. My worst weakness is the shopping list, though. I think through every meal and write down all the things I think we need, then later in the week I realize this meal needs flour and we're out of flour. This means Jeff takes a couple extra trips to the store some weeks.

So, in an attempt to kill three or four birds with one stone, I've come up with a system that I think will work quite nicely. And I hope it does, because I spent some good time preparing it.

Now, planning meals is a simple game of moving magnets around! It was really easy, just a little time consuming. And I thought it up all by myself, which makes me a little bit proud of myself. (But not too much, because I remember why I had to come up with this system in the first place.)

To start off, I made a chart in Microsoft Word. If I had a better program, I'd probably have tried to make it a little cuter with fun colors and a better layout. Maybe I would have even made a border around each box. Unfortunately, my home computer is a little on the simple side as far as programs go.

So, two-column table in Microsoft Word. In one column I typed the name of the dish, in the other I typed a bulleted list of all the ingredients I would need to make that dish. I checked all the recipes to make sure I had the right ingredients, but also left room so I could write any missing ingredients in. I did have to manipulate it a little bit, which I'm a pro at in Microsoft Word, to make sure that none of the ingredient lists were split between two pages.

I also made tags for the days of the week, a "date night" tag (because we'll still go out to eat for date night, of course), a "leftovers" tag (because we usually have a few leftovers per week and we don't want those to go to waste!) and a tag that reads "Game Day (every man for himself)" because sometimes on game days, I really don't want to cook. :) Especially because on football game days, I get free Tucano's, so why would I cook for that? And on volleyball game days, I usually have to be at the fieldhouse prepping for the match around the time I'd be cooking dinner.

I made these for about 30 dinners, because I'm not a huge fan of repeats. I printed the cards on cardstock for a little stability. Then I cut out every row, which took forever.

I used fun fonts for the day tags and random tags, but I just used a normal font for the meal cards.

After cutting them out, I laminated them for extra durability. I figured that since they'd be around food, they'd need the added protection. Not having a laminating machine, I got a bunch of photo laminating cards. (Well, Jeff bought them while running errands... Those were his idea.) They were a great size, but I cut a little too close to the card, so half of them I either re-laminated or I taped them together with clear packing tape. And a couple I just laminated with clear packing tape. Really sloppy, but I was a little frustrated. :) If you don't have a real machine, make sure to leave a good 1/4-inch edge so the laminating sheets don't fall off!

Following the laminating process, I put magnets on the back. I had a roll of magnet from a school project (that stuff with a sticky back), but it didn't stay very well, so I ended up hot gluing the magnets to the cards. That worked great! After everything cooled, I lined the day tags up on my fridge and picked the meals to go with them! So far it's worked great. :) Although we're only about three days in....

I also added a couple of blank pages to the side, one for a shopping list and one for a Costco shopping list, since we only do Costco runs about once a month.

Oh, and I made a "Menu" tag, because everything needs a title. I am, after all, a writer.

Sorry if the pictures are a little crazy. I'm still figuring out my camera. :)

So, there you have it--my newest attempt to be organized in the kitchen.