Once-a-Month Menu Planning and Grocery Shopping

Many people have asked me how I can possibly menu plan and grocery shop for an entire month. Well, it took me a while to come up with a system that works for me. My persistence paid off, but it took me awhile to get it. Looking back, I can laugh because now I cannot see myself doing it any other way. This method has saved me so much time in the long run.

I used to be a heavy couponer. I saved a lot of money that way, but I stopped couponing when I was working on a contract job that required 60-70 hour weeks. I just didn’t have the time to coupon anymore and go around to all the grocery stores, hunting down the good deals. I had to figure out another way.

My biggest issue with once-a-month menu planning and grocery shopping was that I could not figure out how to keep the fresh items fresh before the month ended. I ended up throwing out a lot of vegetables that I couldn’t seem to fit into my meal plans by the end of the month. I read many blogs about how some ladies were able to plan around the fresh produce first and then resort to canned and frozen produce by the end of the month. It seemed easy enough in theory, but I just couldn’t seem to wrap my head around it. Then, it came to me!

I was thinking about this all wrong! What is the harm in going to the store for fresh produce once a week? Believe it or not, that “EUREKA” moment opened a new door for me! The following method is what I came up with.

Step One: Making a Menu Plan

My menu plan consists of meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Resources can come from:

• Cookbooks
• Magazines
• Pinterest or other social media
• Websites
• Cooking shows
• Friends
• Personal recipe files
• Favorites

I think planning is the fun part and gives me a lot of inspiration. First, I plan dinners and side dishes. I tend to separate dinner into 4 categories:

• Beef
• Chicken
• Seafood
• Other (Soup, Dinner Salad, Sandwich, Vegetarian, Pasta, Pork/Lamb, Pizza)

Every 4^th day, we have a leftover night. If leftovers are not available, we will either pull a freezer meal from the freezer or enjoy a night out.  Having these categories helps me to stay focused instead of getting lost in all the yummy food that I come across.

After I have my dinners and side dishes written down, I plan breakfasts, lunches and snacks. For these meals, I have to think more about how long something will last; for example, a batch of muffins for breakfast may last 2 or 3 days. Making that kind of determination helps me figure out the number of meals I will need for each week.

Step Two: Making a Grocery List

In this part of the process, I have to gather all the recipes from the plan I just made. That may mean, printing online recipes and gathering the resources I will need for the entire month. On a sheet of notebook paper, I divide the page with a horizontal line. At the top on the left side of the page, I write “Grocery”; on the top on the right side of the page, I write “Week 1.”

This is the tedious part of my system. I make a notation for each nonperishable item I will need for that week according to the recipes. I also list all the fresh items for the recipes I will make for the first week under the “Week 1” heading. When I am done with the first week, I write “Week 2” in the same column as Week 1. Then, repeat the process for the ingredients for all the recipes used for Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. For the most part, a month is typically 4 weeks.

The “Grocery List” column is the once-a-month purchases. These are all non-perishable items, such as canned goods, meats that are stored in the freezer, paper products, baking items and mixes, etc. This column contains all the non-perishable items for all weeks of the month.

(Optional) If you are a meal prepper like I am, you might want to add another step here by sketching out a plan for your meal-prepping days. Since I already have the recipes gathered, I might as well make a plan for what those recipes need as far as preparation is concerned.

I usually plan, create my grocery list and sketch out my prep plan a couple of months ahead of time, so that I have my planning in place ahead of time, which means less scrambling. It does take some time, but not that much time. Meal planning is something I can do while watching TV or YouTube.

Step Three: Inventory

At the first of the month, take the list of ingredients you just made and look in your pantry, refrigerator and freezer to see what you already have on hand. Cross off each item that you do not need to buy. The remainder of the items is those you need to purchase when you are ready to place your order.

Step Four: Look at Sales Circulars

Taking my list of ingredients, I then look at the sales circulars for my local stores. Since sales circulars change every week, typically on Wednesdays, I tend to make a list of the best items at the best prices every week. I do not purchase fresh items for weeks 2, 3 and 4 right now. Many of the fresh items I use most often are on sale somewhere every week. I also like to stock up on non-perishable items and specialty food offerings if they are on sale.

Every week, I enter the sale items in a Word document I created with grocery store categories that include the store initials, the items and the price. I can compare my list of ingredients to the Word document list to see at a glance the items that are on sale at each store all in one place.

Step Five: Grocery Shopping

Whenever my new once-a-month menu starts, I am ready to place my online order or physically shop at a store. Sometimes I do both. I love, love, love online grocery orders that I can pick up. At the beginning of a new menu, I shop online at 3 stores: Kroger, Walmart, and HEB (a Texas chain). One thing I love about ordering groceries online is that I can comparison shop at these three stores through their website to get the cheapest price. I will also look at the fresh items that I need for Week 1 and purchase those as well. I will purchase those the week they are needed. This saves money because some fresh items will not last more than a week. I set up the pickup times within the same hour range because I am done with pickups in an hour. I also shop at Aldi on the same day as my online pickup day. Aldi has many staple items that I use all the time at the best prices. In total, my shopping only takes a couple of hours.

There are 2 grocery stores that do not have pickup service that I must physically go into if I need to. I track the sales at these stores but only go to these stores if I really need something on sale that the others do not have. I will occasionally go to Sprouts because they do have quite a few Keto products. I typically go to Costco every couple of weeks. I generally buy the same items there every time I go such as toilet paper, paper towels and water, but I do buy a few other items there as well depending on my needs.

Step Six: Putting Groceries Away

Once I get home from Aldi and pickups, I have to put all that stuff away. I complete a quick organization of my pantry shelves, refrigerator and freezer as I put my items away.

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Meal planning is an endless cycle because we all have to eat, right? It also takes a little bit of time, but not that much time. Once you get into a routine, it is so easy and convenient and will save you money in the long run.