Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Meal planning

I'm a couponer. I'm not great at it, but I do save a pretty good chunk. I'd say, on average between sales and coupons, I tend to save about 50% on my grocery bill. I only shop on Sundays. I wake up Sunday morning and look through this week's coupons, clip the ones I want and browse through to refresh my memory what I have. Then, I open the sales flyers for the grocery stores, CVS, Target, etc. I try to match up what we have in the house and what's on sale that week with cheaper meal plan ideas. This past weekend, I was overwhelmed. I woke up later than usual. which would normally be relaxing, but when it's noon time and I haven't even figured out my shopping list yet? ......... I got stressed. The Husband bore the brunt of my crazy, unfortunately for him. I was overwhelmed and couldn't figure out what the heck we were going to eat for the week. Not to mention that I have to work this coming weekend, so I had to meal plan for 2 weeks. *sigh* I just didn't have it in me. The Husband sat down and wrote out a meal plan for the 2 weeks. Thank goodness! I was able to tell him which meals had to be on there due to sales, etc.

Unfortunately, lately I've been dreading the shopping more and more. I tend to shop at at least 4 stores on any given Sunday - Costco, Target or Walmart, Food Lion, and Harris Teeter. Occasionally, I'll need to throw in CVS and/or Petsmart. It takes up most of my Sunday. And while I'm glad to have it done come Monday, it definitely makes my weekend seem shorter... I'm thinking I may need to start doing things in piece-meal. I may start clipping coupons some weeknight, and maybe making a meal plan as the week goes on. I don't know.

How do others coupon effectively while working a full-time job? And clean the house? And work out? And have time to relax, read, knit, etc?!?!?

1 comment:

  1. Ha! You really think I get all that crap done?!? Not! I'm an Aldi kind of girl myself...no coupons and one stop shopping.

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