I used to ONLY meal plan on a month basis, but really got out of the habit as the boys have gotten older. (and going to the grocery store has stopped being so miserable and awful.)

However, as our schedule is filling progressively more and more with elementary school activities. I knew I had to get back into this habit. Plus, I’ve been going to the grocery store entirely too much! So, on Friday, I took an inventory of what we had in the pantry, freezer, deep freeze, and fridge. From there, I began to fill in with sale items. For example, pasta was on super sale at Publix so I decided to replace our usual pizza night with easy pasta dishes. We also had a weird amount of hot dogs leftover from Liam’s birthday party, so I wanted to use those up. If you didn’t see my Instagram post last week, I also won a free year of burritos from my local Moe’s as I waited in line and was one of the first 50 to enter! So, we will be eating a lot of Moe’s in the coming months. Since this is the perfect season for grilling, you will notice I added several grilling nights. I just freeze my meat in marinade, so I can thaw it and its ready to go!

We had a lot of tomato soup on hand from the hurricane, so I added grilled cheeses and made it a dinner! When I asked the boys what they wanted on the meal plan, they asked for mac and cheese and ramen noodles. So, we turned that into a night!

So, get creative. Use what you have before you build your shopping list. Be realistic, if you know you’re doing to eat every Saturday. Add that!