Repeating your weekly Meal Plan

Repeating your weekly meal plan

Spring is finally here and summer will be here before you know it. As the beautiful weather rolls in our lives seem to get busier and busier! Baseball, school, camping, family reunions, weddings etc, it is a really fun and exciting time. But all those fun times means less time at home, to plan out your family meals. Summer is usually a more expensive time for everyone, more activities and traveling etc, so we always try to save money where we can. Eating at home whenever possible is one of those ways. So I came up with an easy and simple meal plan that we will repeat every week. I picked meals that my family loves, cause no one wants to spend a beautiful summer night fighting with their kiddo's to eat their supper! So here it is, our meal plan: 

Monday - Panini's and Soup

Tuesday - Breakfast for supper (pancakes, waffles, crepes, (serve with fruit) pan scramble)

Wednesday - Crock pot (any crock pot freezer meal we have kicking around)

Thursday - Spaghetti (or some other pasta dish) garlic bread, salad

Friday - Pizza and salad

Saturday - BBQ (Hot dogs, steak, smokies or burgers) Baked potato's, veggies

Sunday - Chicken dinner (Chicken, potatoes or rice, veggies)

Before choosing the meal plan I ran the list of choices past my family and together this is what we came up with, I am so excited to get started! I made sure to choose super easy meals that don't take up too much time. My plan is to stick to this order, but sometimes things change and you need to learn to roll with the punches, so we will make changes as needed. Eating this way can also save you money, you can now buy things in bulk cause you know you will use all of it. It can save you time because you will no longer be running to the store every day, doing your weekly or bi-weekly shop should cover everything, so you should already have everything you need at home. Also not running to the store every day can save you money, it can save you from buying things you don't really need.

So this is our plan for the summer, we will see if this works for us, maybe it will feel too repetitive, but maybe it will work beautifully for us and our busy family! We shall see, either way, I am excited to get started! 

Let me know if you plan to try something like this, what meals do you think your family would like? Let's try this together and simplify our lives! 

Monday Panini and Soup

Tuesday Breakfast for Supper

Wednesday a Crockpot Freezer Meal

Thursday Spaghetti Night

Pizza (Homemade, store bought, order out, whatever works) and Salad

BBQ Night baked potatoes and veggies

 Chicken with rice or potatoes with veggies

All of these meals really work for our family, maybe they will work for you too! 

*** UPDATE ***

We are heading into our third week and so far so good, everyone is enjoying the meals, it doesn't feel too repetitive yet. It is so nice to only shop for the item's I need and that saves me a lot of time too! We have however had to switch around what gets eaten on which day, so we have find of thrown that part out. The meals remain the same, but if panini's don't suit us on Monday then break out the pancakes lol whatever works and makes your life simpler, right?!

Have you tried this? Is it working for you and your family? 

We are all still in love with the plan! 

Organizing the House Part 2 small freezer & bathroom cabinet

Once in a while, I take the time to think about all the spaces in my home that need some organizing, I tackled a couple more of those spaces today. First the little freezer above my fridge, it can become a place where we toss everything and you never know what is hiding in there! 

This only took a few minutes and the results are great!

I used a few baskets from the Dollar Tree, they are super handy! 

I store my peppers in this one, now I didn't use any labels because my needs for my little freezer are always changing, this week I have lots of peppers, next week I might not have any and want to use the basket for other things.

This one holds my sliced lemons and cranberries, I like to add these to jugs of water, it makes it look pretty! 

We use hashbrowns often in this house, so now they have their own basket and you can clearly see when they are starting to run low.

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Now onto the Bathroom cabinet

We have one large cabinet in the bathroom and we store everything in it.

This is the largest part of it. It seems to just collect everything, stuff gets tossed in there instead of placed, and then we close the doors, it needed some help, lol!

With just a bit of time and a couple baskets, I found something that will hopefully work for us, the bottom shelf of  the small shelf is empty so there is room to grow! 

This is the before of one of the shelves, it did have some organization in the back, but so much junk was getting put in front of it, it wasn't working anymore. So I cleaned it up and organized it a little differently to make things work again.

Before

After, now everything has a place again, you can see everything and it all looks neat and clean.

Now I forgot to take a before picture but this is of our laundry soap section, the reason why there are all the juice jugs and old laundry jugs is because I make my own laundry soap and I just refill those jugs. 

I also have my Norwex products which I love!

Speaking of Loving Norwex, here is how I hang all my cloth's, this way they are always in reach, I can always see what is clean, I love this system, everything is easy to grab!

Everything feels so much better when it is organized, now if only I can get my kids and my husband to put things back where they belong and we won't have any more problems!! LOL! 

Let me know if this inspires you to change a space in your home that has been bugging you! 

Organizing the house! Part 1 Deep Freezer & Pantry

Recently I have been thinking about our home, what area's could run more smoothly? What area's are messy? Which area's need help? I sat down and made a list of a few area's in the house that needed some help, today I got two of those areas cleaned up, here are some pictures of the progress we made today!

My Husband helped me clean out our big deep freezer, it was such a mess, we never knew what we really had available to us in there and often bought things we didn't need to, simply cause we couldn't find them.

Here are some pictures of our messy freezer!!

My hubby made me a "Freezer stick" so it can hold the big heavy door open for me! 

We had a few milk crates in the freezer already, but we needed more, we came across a pile of them in black at Walmart for 3.77$ such a great price! If you can manage to get these for free or second hand, even better! These work perfectly, they are tough enough to withstand the cold, they have handles so you can easily lift them in and out and they are big enough to fit a lot of stuff in them. 

So I made up some labels out of stock paper I had on hand and we tied them on with some string we had, these are easily removed and replaced with something else. Everyone's freezer will have different needs, in our case we used the following labels: Fish, Chicken, Beef, Deer, Veggies, Bread, Fruit, Freezer meals, Chicken Pot Pies. 

Now the crates aren't quite as long as the freezer so I used reusable grocery bags to fill the rest of the space, in one bag I have all frozen items for school lunches, muffins, and a small one for sandwich meat! Here is hoping this system works for us, if it doesn't we just have to change the labels and move things around. 

It looks so nice and neat now! 

I hope this inspires you to tackle a space in your house that just isn't working for you right now!

Now on to the Pantry

I am so happy with the after result, it will function so much better now! We call this our pantry, but technically this is a closet in one of the bedrooms that we have turned into a storage room, my hubby added all the extra shelves, to make the pantry work more efficiently for us!

I got all of these containers at the Dollar Tree, I know who knew you could get so many great containers for such a low price, each basket was 1.25$ that is awesome and some of these are really sturdy! These labels are also from the Dollar Tree, they are chalk board stickers, and it even comes with its own chalk, I love this idea, cause our pantry needs are always changing, just erase it and re-write it with whatever you need it to say!

These big baskets are perfect for the big items, chip, pretzels, and also I have plastic cereal containers in the kitchen, so I always have leftover bags of cereal, this big basket is perfect to hold all of them! 

I love for everything to have a place, I am so happy I tackled these projects today, everything looks great and functional!

Let me know if you do any organizing make overs to your home, and if you do try out the dollar Tree containers, let me know what you think!