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Posted by ThriftyMom on Mar 28, 2009 in Menus | 0 comments

Organizing Your Kitchen: In 5 Simple Ways

This is a guest post by Autumn from oldfashionedfamilies.com For more tips for your Kitchen stop by her blog at oldfashionedfamilies.info

Organizing your kitchen is one of the best time savers and believe it or not money savers too! Money saving you ask? Yes, and I will tell you why! Remember when you were searching high and low for those 2 cans of tuna that you just know you had and you simply could not find them? And then out of no where a couple days later you realized that they were back behind the can of chili, container of oatmeal and bag of rice? I bet you know where I am going with this. If your pantry, cupboards and freezer were simply organized a tad better you would be able to walk right to the item you were looking for, grab it and start or continue making dinner for your family. I am going to show you some easy tips and tricks to keep yourself, kitchen, pantry and freezers organized for you to save you time and money in the future!

Tip #1: Begin by creating an inventory of ALL of the items you have currently in your cupboards, pantry, fridge and freezer(s). There is an awesome site that has FREE templates for exactly this! A Virtuous Woman**www.avirtuouswoman.org** (just scroll half way down, on the left you will see Free Printables) Go ahead and print a couple for you, I use one per area, ie: cupboards, pantry, etc. While you are inventorying your areas, be sure to start organizing your items where and how you want them to be. Remember, organized is time saved and money saved! A special tip: Be sure to use pencil when creating your inventory lists!

Tip #2: After you have created your inventories on all of your areas in your kitchen (and/or freezer in your garage or basement) and you have organized all of your food items take note of what you do not have in those specific areas. Yes, here you can make your shopping list so you will know what you need come grocery day. And look! You already know what you currently have in your cupboards, freezer(s), pantry and fridge! No more buying a block of cheese, coming home to put it away and discovering there is a whole block of cheese never been opened! See the money savings already?

Tip #3: Dinner Menu’s are a great way to save time and money for yourself as well. Start out by grabbing another Free Printable from A Virtuous Woman**www.avirtuouswoman.org** (same place on website for Tip #1), grab your inventory lists, newspaper ads (from grocery stores) and any compilations of recipes for dinner (lunch, etc.) and go to town! Find a recipe that you would like to have for the week, check the local ads for sales specific to the ingredients in your recipe, check your inventory lists for specific items already at your home, and place it on your menu! Regardless if you choose to create a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly menu, you are still saving time and money!(Check out this post for more information on Dinner Menu’s**http://thriftyhearts.net/archive/category/menus/**)

Tip #4: As you are creating your monthly menu by utilizing your inventory lists, local grocery ads and recipes, create a grocery shopping list for yourself. (Saving time once again!) And if you by chance are like me and know exactly what aisle everything is huddled together in, you will be able to organize your shopping list to maximize your time and trip down each and every aisle. A special tip: Do not go down the aisles that you do not need to! If one of your items is not down there, turn around! (Money AND time saver!)

Tip #5: When you get home from your grocery shopping extravaganza, help your children and/or hubby with where each item goes, stacks, etc. This way each person in the family will know how the organizing system works and this helps to keep your areas nice and neat. And do not forget to inventory each item before it gets put away! This way as you cook through out the week you will be able to erase your item off your inventory sheet, or place the correct number of that specific item next to it. You will NEVER guess again whether or not you have that item somewhere in your home!

These 5 tips on organizing your kitchen will not only be a time and money saver for yourself, but also a stress saver! You will not have a care in the world when you are standing in aisle 8 at the grocery store wondering if you actually have that bag of rice at home for your Cheesy Broccoli and Rice meal because you know that by looking at your list you did not need ‘rice’ as it is not on there! Already you have a couple extra dollars, or $3.86 to be precise in YOUR pocket; not sitting on your pantry shelf because you’ve made this common mistake 2 or 3 times!

I hope you have enjoyed these tips on organizing your kitchen, now get to work!

Posted by ThriftyMom on Mar 6, 2009 in Food, Menus | 1 comment

Dinner Menu’s

This post is from our Guest blogger Autumn E. Hanson who has a great new blog called Old Fashioned Families, and is the owner of a great website by the same name

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you read the words ‘Dinner’ and ‘Menu’? Restaurant? Fast-food? Time consuming? Annoying?

On the contrary, my friend! Creating a Dinner Menu, whether it’s weekly, biweekly, or monthly is not only a time SAVER but also a MONEY SAVER!!! It also keeps your relationship with your husband a little happier too! Because you’re not waiting till the last minute to figure out what to make for dinner, and you and your husband are not arguing about what sounds good and who wins in the end!

There are many ways to create a Dinner Menu. Whether you decide to grab a blank piece of paper, ruler and pencil or you can use the free website that I like to use; A Virtuous Woman. If you scroll down the page, on the left side there is a template for a pdf blank month calendar, and various other ones as well. Just print off your menu and there you go!

When creating your menu, you want to keep in mind the items your family enjoys and maybe even adding a few new recipes in there to keep dinners fresh or new. You can always do a search on the Internet as far as what ingredients you have, and go from there.

Now, you’re asking yourself, ‘How does this save me time?’. Easy! It saves you time because you know EXACTLY what you are making for dinner! It saves you time in the grocery store because you already have a LIST of what you need to buy and don’t need to go down aisles that your items aren’t in. Which reminds me, remember how I said having a dinner menu would SAVE you money? This is part of the reason: You have a LIST! You already know what you are making, and you can steer clear of the aisles that you don’t need to be in (unless you want to). It keeps you from making the impulse convenience food purchases which, SAVES YOU MONEY!!!! And when you know exactly what you are making for dinner, you can prepare what you can in the morning, and finish in the afternoon. Guess what? Instead of spending an hour on figuring out what you’re making, you just look at the menu and start your day!

You really can save money aside from not buying extras in the store! If you already know what you’re making next week, and let’s say you decided this week to make chicken soup. Boil up the chicken in a pot. There you have your chicken stock and now if you shred the chicken, you have the chicken for the soup. You can also take half of the chicken that you already cooked and shredded, throw it in a Ziploc bag and freeze it until next week. You can freeze it one more time after being cooked, but don’t freeze it if there are leftovers after that. Did you see what you were able to do with that one chicken? Not only were you able to make Chicken Soup, but you were also able to make a SECOND meal out of the chicken because you saved some for next week!

By knowing what you are having for dinner, even if it’s a week in advance, those leftovers won’t go to waste. Use them up the next day, or wait 2 days like I do. I like to keep a variety in our diets so we aren’t overwhelmed with one meat product. Try this a month and see if it doesn’t make your days (and dinners) easier and also keep some of that much needed green in your pocket!