I’ve been following your tips for only a few days to try and bring some order to my chaotic house. I’m getting closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, one baby step in front of another. I’ve decluttered my hallway, dining room and handbag so far, and it feels great! There’s a lot more to do, but it’s a start.

But one area where I’m in control is food! My menu planning tip is to use a recipe app (I use one called Paprika). With all my recipes in one place, I menu plan for the week ahead on a Sunday evening, automatically add the ingredients needed to a grocery list and the meals to my iPhone diary. It takes me about 15 mins. Then the next time I’m in the supermarket I’ll have my phone on me so it’s easy to check off shopping already sorted by aisle as I go.

The other thing I do is batch prepare food. I don’t batch cook, that takes too long, and frozen leftovers are never as good the second time around. It doesn’t take long to put some raw/frozen meat, chicken or fish, chopped veg/pulses and tomatoes/coconut milk/wine/stock and spices/herbs in a freezer bag and stick in the freezer. I can prepare quite a few meals in an hour, enough for a month of hectic days. Then for a day I know I won’t have time to cook I can defrost a healthy, homemade meal overnight and put it in the slow cooker in the morning or set the timer on the oven to be ready when I get home with 3 starving kids. I always prepare extra so my husband and I have leftovers for lunch the next day. This is how I lost tons of weight, no more ‘I haven’t got time to cook so we’ll have takeaway again’!

Thanks for all you do!

Welcome to November – the Menu Planning month. All month long, we are going to learn how to plan our menus to save money and feed our families healthy. This will be a fun habit to learn and to practice.

If you have and recipes you would like to share or a testimonial about Menu Planning Let us know! Send an email to FlyLady@flylady.net with Menu Planning in the subject line.

We have everything you need to keep your home shining! Sometimes we need a little motivation. Our efficient tools give us a jump start! They make a tough job fun. If you make it fun; it will get done!

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