Weekly Menus

RM and I sit down to discuss a six week menu plan, usually on Friday or Sunday when we have more time. We have six sheets and write sticky notes for each day with a menu on the sticky note. We have a few extra menus on sticky notes that we can use if we need a change. Once the six weeks are planned, we don't have to change much. We have a basic menu...family favorites...meat loaf, chicken casserole, etc. because the kids are not at the experimental stage yet.
By shopping for a planned menu and re-using the menus on a rotating six week schedule, we can buy enough to stock the pantry and carry us through some "lean" weeks.

We shop together most of the time. We have been shopping once a week lately because of the fresh items. We make a list for the things we need for the upcoming week menu. Then we try to stick to the list. I'm bad about seeing something on the shelf and just putting it in the cart.

We also buy for the freezer. Especially vegetables, butter, fish sticks, salmon and stew meat.  Then we cook fresh hamburger meat and measure it out into 1 lb. packages to use for taco casserole or spaghetti sauce.

We use coupons. RM is the coupon genius. We organized the coupons in a loose-leaf binder using baseball card plastic sleeves. We lined the pages lined by aisles at the Commissary and we have a special section for Target only coupons. RM keeps track of the double coupon days and we try to buy some of our staple items with coupons that can be doubled.