My husband and I follow much of the advice from this article. When we do this, we tend to spend less on groceries and eat out a lot less.
~Weekly meal planning
There are many different ways to plan your meals. How you plan yours depends on how much time you want to spend now to save yourself time later.
I plan my meals once a week. Because I have limited refrigerator/freezer space and a small family of three to feed, this plan seems to work best for me. I only go to the grocery store once a week. When I'm getting ready to go to the store, I sit down and starting planning my menu for the next week.
~Clean out the refrigerator.
This is a good time to go through this week's grocery ads to see what's on sale this week. I also take this time to clean out my refrigerator to see what needs thrown away and what can be re-used as leftovers in the next couple of days. Cleaning out your refrigerator weekly is crucial in avoiding wasting food that could still be used to make a perfectly good meal.
So after I've cleaned out the refrigerator and scanned the grocery store ads, I start my
list. I try to plan around what I already have in the freezer. For example, if I know I have a pound of hamburger in the freezer and I know I have spaghetti noodles on hand, then I just need to put spaghetti sauce on my list in order to have spaghetti for dinner one night.
I've also found that often we don't need as much meat in our meals as you might think. For our family of three, a pound of hamburger can be used for both spaghetti and tacos. If I cook the hamburger all at once, I can just put half of it in the refrigerator for the next meal (a big time savings!). If I already have taco shells on hand all I need is to make sure the sour cream I have in the refrigerator is still good, and add lettuce and tomatoes on my
list.
~Stock up on sale items
You should always stock up on meat when it's on sale. If you do you'll find that some weeks you'll end up buying almost no meat at all, if any. I also stock up on items, like jars of spaghetti sauce, when they're discounted. Then I'll always have a quick dinner ready on a moment's notice if I already have hamburger (also bought on sale) and spaghetti noodles on hand.
Some weeks I realize that I already have much of what I'm going to need for the week. Some of the staples I keep on hand: sour cream, cheese, taco shells, spaghetti noodles, egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, onions, potatoes, garlic, tuna, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, black olives, canned clams, and rice. These ingredients make a lot of the meals we eat, like: hamburger and rice, beef stroganoff, tacos, spaghetti, clam chowder, and hamburger gravy and mashed potatoes.
I usually plan for only 5 meals a week. I know that sometime during the week we'll be eating leftovers or fending for ourselves due to time constraints.
This system has worked really well for me and saved us lots of money. I plan once a week, shop once a week, and don't give a thought to meal planning for the rest of the week. And I don't hold myself to cooking a certain meal on a certain night. I usually decide that day what I'm going to cook for dinner to be a little flexible.
Meal planning doesn't have to be hard. Modify your plan to suit your family's needs. Just make sure you HAVE a plan. It will inevitably save you time as well as money.
Dawn
s here. Sounds like you are a very organized person. Wish I could be. Am such a procrastinator, but I am going to try and implement some of your 
and my sons would have survived on spaghettio's and hot dogs 
It really makes 
ed that I had a freezer on my back porch!
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