Graphic Monday: Shopping List/ Meal Planning Guide
Graphic Monday: Shopping List/ Meal Planning Guide

Graphic Monday: Shopping List/ Meal Planning Guide

Back when I wrote my post on our Weekly Cleaning Schedule, my friend Lauren suggested I do one for a shopping list. I thought this was a super awesome idea, and I’ve been thinking about the best way to approach it. For my usual grocery runs I just make a list of whatever we’re out of and head to the store… no special organization needed. When I’m prepping for a freezer meal prep day however, I need to be on top of my game when I go to the store so I don’t forget things or take forever when I have a full day of cooking ahead of me.

The first time I did this I organized everything by food category with the thought that I could get through the store faster instead of jumping around all over the place. However when I found the store didn’t have a particular item, I had no idea which recipe it belonged to or what to sub it with. So the next time I just wrote the Recipe name and all the ingredients. This definitely helped me get exactly what I needed, but I probably looked like a kid with ADHD running back and forth to the same isles 15 times.

And so we have what I think is a pretty nice compromise:

Download PDF

Here’s an example… the top spaces allow for the recipe name, so you know what you need to find a substitution for if it’s not at the store. The side columns break it down by category, so when you’re in the a certain section of the store you can get everything at once. There’s also the ability to +add what sides you would like to purchase to accompany a given dish as well.

 

After creating this template it occurred to me that it could also work well as a weekly meal planner. {Notice how I incorporated the above freezer meals into this :)?} You could also do a combo of the two and write down the recipe to go along with each weekday if your the type of person who cooks every day! The possibilities are endless {ok, perhaps not endless, but it sure sounded good…}

 

 

Unfortunately for me this comes 2 days after doing my big Freezer meal day… but you can be sure I’ll be pulling this out next month!

10 Comments

  1. This is such a kick butt idea!  I do the exact same thing, luckily we live close enough to the grocery store that its not too big of a deal, but I would most definitely prefer to cut my shopping time in half!  WOW!  Printing me a copy now!  Thanks Kate for this great idea!

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