meal planning, grocery shopping, and couponing

Planning delicious and healthy meals while still trying to save money has been one of my favorite things about being a wife.  I love sitting down on the weekend and planning out what meals we'll have throughout the week.  Recently I've been trying to make sure any expensive or unusual ingredients are used several times to avoid waste.  I'm not a huge couponer, but if I don't have to go to too much effort, I'll use a few each week.  Here is my approach to stocking our fridge and pantry each week:

Meal Planning
I'm constantly saving healthy and easy recipes that I find on the web.  I usually keep an ongoing draft of an email where I'll save the links with a brief description or title.  About every 4 weeks I'll go through and print out the recipes that I think I'll actually make.  I then organize the recipes by vegetarian, pasta, salad, and meat-focused and make sure that I have a good variety for each week.  Next I look for trends in ingredients (so I'll make sure if I have to buy fresh basil or mint that several recipes use them each week).

I usually make 3-4 meals a week and the other nights we have leftovers, meet up with friends, grab some sushi, or just throw in a frozen pizza.  It takes a while to organize the recipes for 4 weeks (usually 12-15 recipes total), but then I'm set for the month! I paper clip and label each week's worth of recipes that I plan to make and keep them on our desk for easy reference (I definitely don't always stick to the plan for the month, but it's nice to start somewhere). 

Grocery Shopping
To start my grocery list I write out the things we buy every week (fruit, salad stuff for my lunches, seasonal veggies for sides throughout the week, onions, garlic, frozen berries, bread, eggs, milk, Greek yogurt, cheese/turkey for Bennett's lunches, cereal, granola bars, crackers, hummus, and any other things we may have run out of - oatmeal, tea, coffee, honey, couscous, rice, pasta, flour, sugar, condiments, salad dressings, spices, canned beans/tomatoes/tuna, chicken stock, nuts, nut-butters, etc.).

Depending on which grocery store I'm going to, I'll write out my list (leaving space to add in ingredients for my 3-4 recipes) based on the layout of the store.  I then insert the different meats/seafood, beans, or veggies that I'll need for the meals I've planned to make.

Before going to the store I try to do a quick fridge clean-out of expired items.  This leaves me with a fresh and ready fridge to bring all my goodies home to!  We have a fabulous vegetable storage tub from Bed, Bath & Beyond that I use for my lettuces and spinach.  I'll wash and tear them up at the beginning of the week to make sure that salad prep will be easy for lunches.  I've just started washing all the fruit and putting in tupperware on the weekend to allow for quick and easy snacking during the week.

Couponing
My couponing is very basic, and you may have a much better system than me.  This is what I've found to work for us without getting super stressed about keeping up with it all.  The bulk of our grocery bill comes from fresh produce and meat, and I haven't found too many regular coupons for those items.  I tear out Kroger coupons that are mailed to me and also use coupons.com and shortcuts.com for printable and electronic coupons.

I have a receipt organizer from the Container Store with 12 different dividers which I've labeled with the most logical categories to me (dairy, spices/condiments, produce, meat, breakfast, household items, etc.).  I know some people organize their receipts by expiration date which may work for you.  Within each divider, I order them by expiration date. About once a month I go through and throw out any expired coupons.

Once my grocery list is compiled and organized by the store layout and all my coupons have been put in their proper divider, I pull out the coupons for items I know I will buy at the store.  These I keep in my hand as I'm shopping to make sure the brand is actually going to be the cheapest with the coupon.  Sometimes the store brand is still the best deal.


I'd love to hear some of your tips for effective meal planning, grocery shopping, and couponing.  It's become like a game for me now, but I know getting started can be quite daunting!  It can be hard to save money each week, especially when you are trying to energize your body with the healthiest food, but a little planning can go a long way!