My biggest weakness in managing a household (that sounds so 1950s) is planning and shopping for meals. I underthink, overpay and generally am an inefficient meal-planning mess.
Most people who know me -- and my mother -- probably would be shocked to learn that I usually give away or throw away the Sunday coupons. When I confessed this to Lib yesterday her immediate response was "I don't think we can be friends anymore!"
In a way it shouldn't be that surprising, though, because of two aspects of my personality:
a) I don't like to do things halfway.
b) When something threatens to overwhelm me and I'm not forced to deal with it, I often retreat and ignore.
So, in theory, I would love to have a great system for this. It would be amazing to develop menus weeks ahead of time and do most of the grocery shopping in one or two massive monthly trips. I wish I had the discipline to clip coupons, keep track of rebate receipts, study the store circulars and comparison shop.
It kills me to imagine how much money we're throwing away essentially because I'm lazy! Making the move from eating out nearly every night to cooking in most of the time has been a great money-saver, but I know there's a lot more I could do.
With the move being only a month away our focus right now is on eating what's already in the pantry, refrigerator and freezer. But once we're in the new house I am determined to take another stab at saving serious money on groceries. I might start with a four-week trial of The Grocery Game; has anyone else tried this?
2 comments:
It's habitual, just like anything else. It took me the most time & discipline the first 2 months and now it just fits into the cracks of life.
It would be helpful to have each other - I'm always dying to call someone to tell them about the unannounced BOGO at Food Lion or the rebate/coupon combo at Walgreens that makes a $6.99 bottle of shampoo free.
The Grocery Game looks cool - worth a trial, for sure. Maybe I'll try it, too.
www.thecouponmom.com
She does basically what the grocery game is charging for, but she does it for free.
Toodles!
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