Organized: Menu Planning

I love organizers.  At the beginning of a new year there are new calendars and organizers on display in every store, this year we’ll start fresh and be really organized they seem to say.   But really all those organizers are all the same and this year isn’t any different than last year.  It seems like the only real difference is the size or the decorations on the cover, I need custom and I need something special that can’t be found in any store I shop in because obviously all those organizers on the shelves don’t work for me!  I going to be sharing all the new organizers and organizing techniques I’ll be trying this year in my new Organized series, maybe this will really be the year I finally get organized.

I bet a few of you snickered when I said I loved organizers, after all you have seen what my house looks like, surely I’m not organized.  I really am, but only when it comes to certain things and still in a cluttered way, if that’s is possible. 

One of the areas that I feel I am somewhat organized at is grocery shopping and meal planning.  I want to go grocery shopping and not have to go again for weeks (well, maybe once a week for fresh fruits/veggies and milk).  In order to do that I have to have a menu, I don’t plan it out by day, but I do have enough recipes for 10 – 15 dinners.  I make all sorts of different stuff, so I don’t have a rotating menu.  Usually I make a few standard recipes and throw in a few new ones too.  It takes me an evening to select the recipes, make the list, round up the coupons and go to the store, but then I don’t have to do it again for a few weeks and I do this late at night after the kids are in bed, there is no way I would take them on this marathon trip!  When it’s time to decide what’s for dinner I check my list and decide and then dig through a mountain of cookbooks, recipe cards, and print outs to find the recipe I need, not the best system, but it sort of works.  There are recipes everywhere and I have been know to misplace a few of them here and there.

When I saw this Meal planning organizer at Little Big Girl Studio I knew that it was exactly what I needed.  The tutorial is very detailed with lots of pictures and her link for adding binding with mitered corners was easy to follow too.It went together pretty fast.  I used some of the remnants of that Alexander Henry Tattoo fabric and that super bright orange tie dye fabric and random black fabric and some dark green binding also from my hoard.  The only part of the tutorial that I didn’t follow was the interfacing types (I used what I had on hand, heavy, but no idea what kind) and I didn’t add the magnets.  I plan on keeping this behind the menu board that I made.  Now it’s time for me to make my giant list and get shopping!