the time-saving olympics
back in my pre-kid days, i remember feeling completely baffled by some of the time-saving measures taken by a friend, who was working outside of the home, parenting, and pursuing her masters degree. every sunday, for example, she would pour her preschool son’s milk into 14 little containers so as to shave milliseconds from her weekday lunch and dinner prep time. this struck me as the same mentality employed by olympic swimmers, who shave their whole bodies for a swifter glide through the water. i wondered why my friend was making parenting into an olympic sport.
but now that i am a parent, i have a new perspective. i find myself strategizing about how to cut corners. i have yet to fill my fridge with tiny little milk containers but i no longer question my friend’s time-saving practices. as a mom, an employee, and a student, she was triathlete. her life was necessarily one of high stakes and high structure, and if i saw her again, i’d give her a gold medal.
i have been training for my own event over here, and the good news is that my personal record times will not be adversely affected by my ambivalence toward shaving. i’ve been trying to streamline the meal planning and grocery shopping processes that have historically usurped much of my valuable weekend family time.
my friend sarah mentioned in passing several years ago that she has a weekly grocery list on her computer with all of the staples her family needs for a week. i have recently borrowed this idea, and now i simply print up my own such list (diapers, applesauce, milk, detergent, et cetera) before heading to the grocery.
i am also now following my friend tiffany’s lead, and i have compiled several weekly meal plans that work well for our family. so, for example, if sunday morning rolls around and i would rather watch paint dry than spend time planing our meals for the week (which is often the case), i can simply pull out a previously compiled list of tried-and-true dinners complete with its corresponding pre-compiled list of needed grocery items, and i’m good to go. tiffany’s weekly meal plans are seasonal and make use of many fresh ingredients. i guess this is what makes her an olympian and myself just an olympic hopeful.
i would love to hear about the tactics you use to simplify your life. if you are interested in my weekly meal plans, i’ll be posting them soon. just click on the “weekly meal plans” heading located on the sidebar to your right.
[thanks to http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35584821/ns/today-today_in_vancouver/ for the olympic curling image.]
Tags: grocery, grocery list, meal plan, olympic, olympics, staples, time saving, triathlete
August 12th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I soooooo need easy, healthy, tasty dinner ideas! Starting this next week. Please keep them coming!! Thank you!!!!!
August 12th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
meal-planning – the part of mothering that I like the LEAST. If my children happily ate what I put in front of them, I might enjoy it more! Which leads to my question – I love your easy meal ideas…but at your house is that what everyone at the table is eating? What does one do with the picky child? To moms with older children – how long do I have to see the scowling face over a pb and j sandwhich (which is what his choice is now if he doesn’t like supper) before he starts to eat more variety?
August 12th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
In the same vein as filling fourteen milk containers, I make 5 PB&J’s on Sunday night for my daughter’s school lunches. I also pack the rest of the lunch and preschool snack food and containers two days at a time (excluding fruit, which I prepare daily), otherwise I feel like I do nothing but pack and wash lunch/snack containers all week long. I have about 14 rotating meals that we eat for suppers. We always have breakfast-for-supper on Sunday nights, so that automatically takes care of one meal per week! I much prefer devoting one hour every two or three weeks to meal planning and coupon organization than have to scramble several times per week.
August 12th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Love this post and am right with you on this. Here’s one thing that helps us–my husband and I both have iphones and we share a grocery app. So if he puts anything on the list or I do, we have it on both phones. When I think of dinners, etc, I just add them to the list. Then whoever does the grocery shopping, has the list on their phone. There’s no need to print it out (although I used to do it and it worked great for me until I got this app). The app also categorizes the groceries so I don’t have to go running all over the store! It saves time and some sanity! =)
I can’t wait to see your weekly menus….we have some “tired and trues” that we use but would love to add some more to our list!
August 13th, 2010 at 10:02 am
We subscribe to the Six O’Clock Scramble (thescramble.com) which offers five complete dinner menus each week. They are healthy, easy and fast, and yummy for multiple levels of eater. Each entree comes with a side dish suggestion and most contain suggestions for how to easily customize a portion of the dish for a picky eater (or to spice it up for the adventurous ones). We used to have our rotating list of dishes, but my husband and I are amateur foodies, so this has been way more fun than the same 15 meals over and over.
The program also generates grocery lists automatically based on which recipes you choose that week. You can also save favorite recipes in your ‘recipe box’ and go back to those.
It’s not cheap, $50 a year, but it’s one of the best 50 bucks we’ve spent. And we’re throwing away less food because we cook exactly what we buy, rather than buying random vegetables for side dishes and then never getting around to preparing them.
Worth every penny.
I am all about the optimization and might have to write a whole blog post about it!
August 15th, 2010 at 9:53 am
I love the computer grocery list. Mine has everything that we ever get at the store, and then I print one out for each week. When I need something I highlight it. That, plus the meal plan, saves time.
August 15th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
II totally get the 14 milk containers and do it for snack foods in their baggies, instead of the single serve bags. finally figured out that we really don’t ever eat leftovers, even when we like something, and it just adds to chaos in the fridge. so anything that I know makes more than we need for one meal, I split and freeze at the point closest to completion. For example, 1lb is too much for us on taco night, so I cook 1.5 with the plan to freeze half (works for lots of other meals: chili, spaghetti sauce,etc etc) Casseroles I always assemble into 2 small pans (instead of the huge one from the recipe), freeze one. Works great for cooked pasta and rice. Boil a big batch once, eat what you need and then freeze the rest in serving sizes. Most weeks there’s something not too old in the freezer from the week before that gives me a “night off”. too-big cuts of meat can be halved before freezing. my goal is no leftovers.
August 17th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
got inspired. tried it tonight (today I should say since it consumed my entire day). Result: epic fail.
Try again tomorrow.
September 12th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Oh how late I am to this party, but better late than never, thanks for the shout out!
I’d love to tell you that we have the meals down to a science, but we don’t!. We’ve eliminated close to a third of the recipes that we had in our cookbook (due to them just not being that good), and so, we do still scramble a bit for quick and easy meals. But I’m glad to have my binders on hand for some serious help!