I am on a mission to make my life more simple – our homeschool, our schedule, my WAHM life, keeping my home.
And today I’m starting out with one of the biggies: simplifying our meals, snacks, and grocery shopping.
As a homeschool mama, some days I feel like I spend all day in the kitchen. And while I enjoy cooking and serving my family delicious food, I get super tired of the I’m hungry! What’s there to eat? conversation that happens on a daily basis x 4 children.
Why Simplify Meals, Snacks, and Grocery Shopping?
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So why did I choose food as one of the areas to simplify?
Because it’s sucking up too much of my mental energy.
I don’t want to spend a ton of mental energy on running around in circles with preparing meals and snacks. I want to spend that energy on my husband and my children.
I mentioned in the first post in this series, that I feel like I do a pretty good job of not over-committing our schedules and we have plenty of free time to play and explore.
But it’s me that runs from thing to thing to thing, even if I’m only doing that mentally.
It’s exhausting and I don’t want to live that way any more.
If I can get the daily food and grocery shopping issue settled, then that’s one mental area I can free up to devote to my family.
Please know that these ideas are very simple, but they are saving me a lot of time, which is my goal.
Find the ideas that might work for you and your family, and leave the rest behind!
Make a More Detailed Meal Plan in my Spiral Notebook
I use my cheap-o spiral notebook for just about everything (which is another post for another day!). Each week, I make a detailed meal plan, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Since January, my husband and I have eaten the Trim Healthy Mama way, and that definitely requires planning! I write in 5-7 days’ worth of meals at the time, including the page numbers of the recipes.
That last part right there – including the page numbers? That’s the key.
It keeps me from flipping from page to page trying to find the one little recipe I want to make.
If I’m not using a recipe out of the THM book, I take the recipe out of my recipe binder and tuck it into one of the back pages of my spiral notebook to use later in the week. Or I write which cookbook the recipe is in, so I don’t have to search through three of them trying to find it.
I can’t tell you how many times this one little trick has saved me!
Also, by planning out the week’s meals in such detail, my husband can easily see whether he’s supposed to eat S or E for the day. The week’s meal list stays open on the counter for me to look at frequently, so my husband can also see what meal is coming his way.
(I realize this means nothing to you if you don’t eat the THM way. Just throwing it out there for those of you that do!)
Plan Snacks for My Children
Even though I serve my children protein-packed breakfasts, they inevitably want a snack when mid-morning rolls around.
There are two things I do to make snack time easy (read: not time-intensive for mom):
♥ I have a written list of things they can eat posted on the fridge – cheese sticks, gluten free pretzels, bananas, apples with peanut butter, a scoop of peanut butter on a spoon, a few slices of lunch meat.
The older ones can read the choices to the younger ones and then they can fix a snack for themselves. So simple for me.
While my olders (10 and 8) are fixing snacks, I can go roll the laundry or step out on the porch alone for 5 minutes.
♥ If a snack needs to be in portions, I go ahead and put it in baggies.
I always portion out our GF pretzels because they’re expensive and I don’t want them eaten in one sitting. Plus, portioning out snacks makes it easy for my littles to grab their own bag and go sit at the table for their snack.
Cook and Chop in Batches
We don’t eat out very often, so I cook at home a lot. It’s expensive for the 6 of us to go out and it’s pretty difficult to eat out gluten free, so we tend to eat at home.
Once or twice a week, I spend a bit more extra time in the kitchen cooking batches of things we will eat throughout the week.
I cook extra ground beef or chicken for spaghetti or casseroles.
I take time to chop up vegetables and fruit (cantaloupe, watermelon, etc). These go in my Tupperware FridgeMates, which keep food fresher for longer than anything I’ve ever tried. No, I don’t sell Tupperware, but I’m a happy customer with this particular product.
I make a double batch of breakfast cookies or whatever other goodie we’re eating for breakfast.
I shred a lot of cheese (salads, casseroles, eggs, etc.)
I always cook a quadruple batch of pancakes on Saturday morning so we’ll have breakfast for Sunday morning also.
Those steps I just listed are such time savers to me because it prevents me from spending long days every day in the kitchen. It usually ends up only being 2 maybe 3 longer days, which I can totally live with.
I Buy As Much Convenience As I Can
Between eating the THM way and being gluten free, we eat an almost exclusively whole food diet.
(I will readily admit that I occasionally long for the days when we used to order pizza!)
Because we can’t buy frozen lasagna or the like, convenience foods are pretty much off of my list.
However, I do occasionally buy broccoli and cauliflower that are pre-cut. On weeks when I know life is going to be crazier than usual, these are enormous time savers.
Since these veggies are pre-washed, you can just open the bag, and put them in the steaming basket. Or put them on a plate with ranch for the kids and it’s an easy side dish.
Also, I buy Tyson’s frozen grilled chicken breasts to keep in the freezer. I eat these in a quick homemade soup or dice into a quick chicken salad for lunch a few days each week.
The perfectionist side of me screams that it’s horrendous that I buy frozen grilled chicken instead of just grilling my own and freezing it. However, the side that screams to simplify quickly takes away my guilt. 🙂
My Husband Does Our Grocery Shopping
I’m sure it makes a few of you cringe that my husband does our grocery shopping.
But me? Oh I’m fairly certain I hear angels singing every time he says, “Have you made the grocery list? I’m going to the store tonight.”
Oh be still my heart that my man will go to the store.
I detest grocery shopping and see it as a time waster for me. There’s only 9 million other things that I need to be doing.
So my dear husband took on the task and removed it from my plate. He’s a good man.
This one thing has probably simplified my food life the most.
So what do you do to simplify your meals, snacks, and grocery shopping?
Learning to Simplify Life: Homeschool, Meals, Housework, Schedule, WAHM Life
Hi Lauren, i live in Norway and we have a super simple way to eat breakfast and lunch – it is basically a “smorgasbord” (cold table) of breads, cheese, jam, meats and anything else you like! Everyone gets a plate and some bread (you can have different kinds of bread or rolls as well) and takes what they want. We eat together at the table, so it is family friendly as well. It is very easy and the kids love it! (we do eat dinner leftovers for lunch too, but there isnt always leftovers with my 5 big eaters!)
Look forward to reading the rest of your Learning to Simplify posts!
Best wishes, Julie
Julie, I LOVE your idea! It’s like a buffet!
That’s really smart in that the prep time seems more simple and everyone still sits down together to eat (which is a priority for us).
Thanks so much for sharing this!!
One thing that has helped me is a leftover night I serve a little bit of everything I have left over on everybody’s plate. You can put it all on a couple plates and they can pick and choose what they want works well do my family but I try to make sure a make an excessive amount so I actually have leftovers. Thanks for the tips!
Kera, great suggestion!!
Since we homeschool and are actually at home during the day, I often have a clean-out-the-fridge lunch once a week or so. You’re right – it does work well!
But I tell you…as my 12 year old boy gets older, there are fewer and fewer leftovers!! (GOOD GRIEF boys can eat!!)
Thanks for stopping by today!
xo, Lauren
I’ve used the Plan to Eat website for several years now! We’re a mostly GF household too (my husband and daughter aren’t as strict as my son and I), and boys do eat a lot! Check out that site if you never have. They do a sale around thanksgiving that’s 50% off the annual rate.
Hmmm. Plan to Eat. That rings a bell somewhere in the recesses of my memory. I’ll go google it!
Thank you!
xo, Lauren
There are a few things that we do in addition to what was already listed here.
For batch cooking, I often cook a double batch of anything freezable and freeze the extra BEFORE we eat. I package the protein and starch in separate containers but match them together in the freezer. For example, curry chicken in bag #1, rice in bag #2. Bag#1 and bag #2 taped together in the freezer. My 8 and 10 year olds can reheat these meals with minimal supervision. Note: rice freezes beautifully, pasta not so much.
We garden so we have a lot of frozen vegetables and some fruit. I buy a large amount of fruit when it is in season and process it myself. We can a lot of apple sauce because it doesn’t require any added sugar. I know that this doesn’t exactly seem simpler but for me it is simpler to make a giant kitchen mess for a couple of days a year than to make a smaller mess everyday.
Shredded meats: I cook big batches of shedded meats but leave them plain so we can use them however. Poached chicken is great for this.
We might have tacos, stir fry, salad, bbq, sandwiches etc. from the same batch of meat. Shredded ham is great to have around for sandwiches and to go with breakfast-style dinners. Cook a ham (not spiral sliced) in a crock pot until it starts to fall off the bone. Shred and freeze.
Tortillas: I buy tortillas by the case. Any tortilla that you can buy off the shelf has an amazing shelf life (a bit scary actually). Its easier than keeping up with bread.
Beth, these ideas are magnificent!! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your ideas!
xo, Lauren