once a month shopping for large family series part 3 shopping

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So far you have planned your families favorite meals, you then organized them into a monthly menu schedule and created a shopping list, now you have to actually go and buy the items.

There was a time long ago, that I would do all of our families shopping alone, I would look forward to “getting away” relaxing a bit, maybe getting a cup of coffee and enjoying my shopping trip all by myself.  But those days are long gone:) Now I prefer to always take someone with me, as my husband says,

“it is always safer in numbers.”

There was also a time that I had to take all of my children, every time to the store.  It could get pretty bad if you didn’t prepare and plan for the trip.  I would make sure that we were all ready to go the night before.  I would lay out clothing, get snacks and have lunch packed in the cooler to take with us.  We had all of our items ready and sitting in the van.  In the summer months I make sure to pack a cooler for cold items.  I take a plastic bin for our bread store trip, to avoid any smooshed breads. (We usually buy 15 loaves of bread each month.)

I would try to get to bed early the night before, knowing that it was going to be a long exhausting day.  I got up in plenty of time to get myself ready.  Then  I would get the children up.  We would eat breakfast, clean them up, and get them ready.  After we were finished we left.  I would try and do my big stores first like Walmart and Aldis and save the smaller stores like our meat store for afterwards in case babies fell asleep, I could leave them in the van with an older sibling.

I would have to time this all around a nursing baby as well, usually about halfway through the second store, the baby would be ready to eat.  I would plan on taking my sling with me to readily feed him, while continuing my shopping trip.  We would take our sit and stand stroller, placing the baby and a “listening” preschooler on the back.  The other toddlers each went in a cart with an older sibling.  We usually use 2 carts per store.

For the most part we could get through our shopping.  By the time we were finished, it was time for lunch and I would pull out the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, and water bottles.  We have about a 20 minute drive home and they would happily eat.

Then we would arrive home, this was the exhausting part….after being gone all day with tired children and ready for naps, I would still have to come home and put away all of the groceries.  It was hard, there was usually a few crying babies while I did it, but we got through it.

That was then……but this is now………..

For about the last year, I would say, our shopping trips have changed dramatically.  Long gone are the days of fussing toddlers and little ones not wanting to go shopping.  My daughter has discovered that she really does not enjoy shopping at all.  Not even clothing shopping.  She would rather stay home and watch all of the babies then go shopping:)  So we usually take her up on that offer.  I usually go with my husband, an older son, a middle child, and the baby.

Now shopping is much more stress free.  My husband usually takes the baby and holds him throughout the stores.  I am free to quickly get through my list.  I have one child stay constantly behind me so that I can pass along the items into their cart.  As soon as their cart fills we switch carts and the older one pushes the heavier cart.

One thing I recommend taking is a pen.  You must, must, must take a pen shopping with you.  When we have a large shopping list, there are things that you won’t be able to get due to shortages or something you just forgot.  I usually circle these items so that I can look for them in the next store easily.

I also take hand cleaner with me.  Lots of germs at the store and when sickness spreads through a large family, it can wipe us out for months at a time.  As soon as we get back into our vehicle all hands go out for a hand cleaner time.

I am happy to say that I now have an official pantry stacker.  My 16 year old is proficient at putting away the groceries.  She dutifully takes on that role and does an amazing job.  Once in awhile if she is gone and I have to put away the groceries, I am at a lost for a few moments.  I am truly thankful that she enjoys doing that for our family.  It is a huge help.

So now when we get home from grocery shopping my husband and two oldest boys carry in all of the groceries to the basement.  I usually send the middle girls to go out and clean out any miscellaneous stuff out of the front of the van.  I am then free to sit with toddlers who missed their momma while she was gone and babies that need momma, cause they are tired.  It works out much better now.

Shopping just gets a whole lot easier.

Now that we have a stacked pantry and full refrigerator…it is time to prep the food

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once a month shopping for large families series part 2 organizing

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Okay, now that you have all of your families meal ideas planned out, it is now time to organize them.

I go in Microsoft office Word  and create a Table with 4 boxes down and 7 across.  I use this to create my Master Menu for the month.  I list which dinners I will be making each day and that allows me to be prepared for the day, knowing what I have to make.

[gview file=”https://plainandnotsoplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/master-menu.pdf”]

 

How I plan out my menu is I choose  certain type of meal for each day of the week.  This I have found is easiest for me.  It cuts down on the planning of what meals I have, I simply choose a soup and sandwich for Tuesdays and keep on going.  Simplify, that is what life is all about.

These are the types of meals for the given days:

  • Sunday–heartier types of meal
  • Monday–casseroles–easy throw in the oven, or cook on the stove top.
  • Tuesday–soup and sandwich
  • Wednesday–italian food
  • Thursday–Breakfast meal
  • Friday–crock pot meals
  • Saturday–easy put together meals like tacos, homemade pizza, hot dogs, etc.

I plan out the types of meals for the corresponding days based upon our families schedule.

  • Mondays are usually busier, trying to catch up from the weekend, so I like to make casseroles as they are easy.
  •  Tuesday is my office/paperwork day.  I can make a pot of soup early in the day and let it simmer all day without having to stop while in the middle of paperwork.  In the afternoon I usually have a younger child make the sandwiches we are having with the soup.
  • Wednesday is my kitchen day.  Which is the day I do all of my baking.  We will almost always have fresh bread and my husband loves fresh homemade bread with his favorite dinner–spaghetti.  Figured this was a good choice to make this day.  Thus the italian day for Wednesdays.
  • Thursday is our breakfast meal.  On Wednesday, I almost always do an overnight breakfast casserole and put it in the refrigerator for today.  Thursdays we try and do our “going to town day”  I like to keep a day each week that we do all of our errands for the week.  To help save on gas and unnecessary trips into town.  Having dinner made makes my day much easier to be able to come home to dinner all completed.
  • Friday is our cleaning day.  We save this day for big cleaning jobs in the household, catching up on any school work, and prepping for the weekend.   Crockpot style foods are good for this day.
  • Saturday, Dad is home and we never quite know what we might be doing.  I like to be able to get dinner together quickly and have found that tacos, nachos, hot dogs, and homemade pizzas are a good make for this day.
  • Sunday, I save our heartier meals for this day. In the summer months, Dad always likes to BBQ out on the Dakota hole fire and I make sure that we have chicken or deer steaks ready for that.  During the colder months I make chicken dinners, Salisbury steak, BBQ meatballs, etc.  We have our church service in the evening and have a long drive.  Since my husband and children are the worship team, we usually have to be there right at dinner time.  I like to be able to have my dinner made at home so that Dad and the older children can make a plate before we go to church and then I pack up the little children’s dinners in thermos containers and they eat dinner while Dad and the older half are practicing for service.

After I have my menu all planned out, I usually choose a few snacks to make for the month from my Desserts and Snacks master menu.  On our kitchen day, which is Wednesday I like to make at least 2 snacks each week for us to enjoy.  If my day is going well, I try and make a large batch of chocolate chip pumpkin muffins, energy bites, or Monster cookies and put them in the freezer.  Because I know that sometime in the next month I won’t be able to bake and we will have unexpected guests.  Better to be prepared.    I add this to my menu for things I want to make for the month and then start planning my grocery list.

[gview file=”https://plainandnotsoplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Desserts-and-snacks.pdf”]

I try and have a stocked pantry for the most part and then as I go through my menu plan, I jot down what types of ingredients that I need to make that meal.  If my pantry is stocked, if I happen to forget something I will usually always have it on hand.

I have a master grocery shopping list that I have organized according to the store’s layout.  It makes it easier to be able to list the items that I usually get in each row, instead of getting all the way to the front of the store and realizing that I forgot something and have to haul my crew all the way to the back.  Simplify—the name of the game.

[gview file=”https://plainandnotsoplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/master-grocery-list.pdf”]

You will notice I have numbers after certain foods on the list.  We make a large family garbage bag snack mix and I never remember how many of each item to purchase, since this is a regular item I just placed the numbers of each snack to buy next to it.

Now all of this planning and organizing, originally took me some time to do.  I didn’t do it all in one day.  But after taking the time to do it, my planning for the meals and shopping has been reduced to a very short time.

There was a time when I would take a whole day to plan out what we would eat for the month.  I would grab all of my favorite recipe books and glance through each and everyone of them.  I usually ended up making very expensive foods and we also made many desserts.  I would end up getting wrapped up in “new” recipes.  I decided I couldn’t afford to sit for a whole day and do this, there was a better way. Now I just glance and copy, much easier.  Saves me time, something we all need.

How you go about simplifying your meal planning for the month is take it in baby steps.  First make a master menu list.  Take a week and jot down all of the meals that your family enjoys.  Once you have it written down, decide how you want to organize it into categories.  We did ours under soups, sandwiches, casseroles, crock pot meals, hearty meals, italian, and quick fix’s.  That way we assign a certain day for that type of food.  Before I did a chicken day, a beef day, a Mexican day, etc, there are so many ways to decide on how to organize your menu plan.

After you have your master menu list, you are going to create a menu for  the month.  Either make a blank calendar grid in Microsoft Office or draw one on a piece of paper.  I know some women even use a dry erase board, but I would not recommend that in a household of little ones, my children have erased my “list to do” on the board by accident one day and I was left with, not knowing what to do next:)

Now fill in any special days for the month on your calendar.  Birthdays, holidays, special date nights–anything that will be out of the ordinary for the month.  If it is a holiday like Thanksgiving, I know we are going to have much turkey leftover, so I will make sure to plan multiple turkey leftover meals after Thanksgiving.

Fill in all of your Mondays, with the types of meals you chose to have that day.  Then continue onward for the rest of the weeks.

The good thing about this method, I know from first hand experience, is that there were times in my life, when I was so busy taking care of multiple little ones that planning out the months grocery menu was extremely hard.  I many times just used the same monthly menu and copied it from month to month.  Eventually things got easier and I was able to change things, but for the times it was not feasible, I was grateful that I took the time to create it.

Now that you have your list….lets go shopping……

 

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