Moms do you plan meals or just fix whatever?

a friend of mine plans all 3 meals 7 days a week plus 2-3 snacks per day. and goes and buys a months worth of groceries for the meals she's planned for. then she comes home and divides up her groceries into meal portions and stores them accordingly. she is a coupon fanantic and shops around for the best deals. after church on sunday, she and her husband each take 2 of there 4 kids and `divide up to different stores and divide the grocery list and shop for what they need or want. she keeps nothing on hand like bags of chips or anything. its just whatever they need for the meals they have planned. i think this would be way to much work. my friend is a sahm and her husband works full time. they have an 8 year old, a 6 year old, an 18 month old and a newborn whose around 3 months. she also plants a garden and they have an apple tree so they get things from their land as well. i don't see how she does it, but she says it saves a ton of $ and they go on a big vacation every july to someplace out of state like disney world or niagra falls or something. in her family, every saturday is make your own pizza night and fridays are fast food night. about twice a month they eat at a nice applebees type restaurant once with the kids and once w/o the kids.



this seems like SO much work to me. and especially to not have anything on hand like chips is odd to me. so do you plan meals, moms? how dedicated to your plan are you?Moms do you plan meals or just fix whatever?
She will save a ton of money shopping like that. Since she's a sahm she has the time to plan these things out and shop accordingly! I plan one week in advance and only buy what I need because our money is pretty tight and there's no need to go buying a bunch of extra junk we don't need. I buy healthy snacks that I know my boyfriend and I both enjoy that way we don't even think about wanting a bag of doritos or oreos.
I'm not good about planning meals, but your friend's approach is a lot like my sister's. It does save $ and I'd rather do it more like they do than like I do now. I think it's a lot of work at first, but you get used to it after a while. Right now I figure out what we'll eat that night while I'm at work. The way they do it could definitely save money compared to my way.Moms do you plan meals or just fix whatever?
let's just say i'm the complete opposite of your friend..lol. I kind of just make whatever is most convinient for that day.
I try to plan the meals for the week, but it doesn't always work. If there is something on sale at the grocery store, I go and buy it to use for dinner. Other times, we just fix whatever. It is my husband, myself, and a 10 1/2 month old. I think it might be a little easier right now, because our son doesn't eat too much. After we have more kids, I will probably try to plan meals better, so I don't have to guess what's for dinner on the way home from work.

Also, if we plan something, but don't feel like eating it that night, we make something else. And we keep chips and stuff in our house, too.
I am a terrible cook. Fortunately my SO is a great cook so he does most of it. He just makes whatever we have at the time. And we always have some kind of snack on hand in case we or our 4 year old wants something quick. It varies from week to week though. Sometimes its chips, sometimes Oreos, this week its pudding. So we're not very dedicated to our plan because we dont have one.
im not a mom, but this is how my mom does it....





she buys things she knows we all like, then when meal-time comes around im usually home and we brainstorm about what sounds good then we cook it...works great....especially since my dads easy to plese =]]



take care
In the end it saves time because you know what you having each meal. I plan breakfast and buy what I usually like to eat. My son eats the same thing for breakfast every morning and I buy a few things to toss it up once in awhile. I love coupons, they really add up in the end!
I plan meals... I spend only 15 min on it though... I look through the sale ads, I write down a list of 14 meal ideas, then I make a grocery list. We rarely stick to it and at the end of the 2 week cycle I usually run out of stuff and we end up having a random couple of meals.



I am a planner and I do thrive best with a plan for everything, but when it comes to food I can't firmly say that next Thursday I will want a roast beef sandwich for lunch with 2 slices of meat, 1 slice of cheese, and the remainer of the tomato I cut into on Wednesday night for dinner.



Maybe I'm a lazy mom. My daughter eats pre-boxed raisins and individually wrapped string cheese. We wouldn't save more money if we bought a whole block of cheese and cut it up. We would just eat it faster because I'd have to get the whole cube out, cut it, maybe then eat some myself... etc.



If I didn't keep snack food in the house my husband would starve when I wasn't home.
I've been a meal plan person pretty much my entire life. I hate not having that organization and I tend to be a bit nutty about what I actually eat. I plan out about five meals a week. One meal is optional and left up to my husband and the other meal is our weekly night out. Neither of us really like junk food but we have a little bit on hand for our nieces/nephews or if the junk food mood should strike us but typically we try to eat wholesome, well rounded meals and we're trying to teach our children the importance or healthy eating.

I go shopping weekly at the farmers market for fresh produce and such and once a month to restock on groceries. I also use my own herbs, veggies and such. When I do go shopping it's at Sam's Club where I can buy things in bulk and I use a ton of coupons.



It's really helped us on our expenses because I buy food we actually eat versus what sounds good and then just letting it sit in the refrigerator or on the self.
I plan dinners, but I'm not nearly so OCD as your friend is about it. I generally plan menus about 2-3 weeks at a time, based on the contents of my freezer. And the contents of my freezer are largely dependent upon what was on sale at Krogers over the previous few weeks. I sit down with my cookbooks and find interesting recipes. Takes an hour or so. I can then buy other ingredients needed for the recipes when I'm on my regular trips to the grocery store.



(Tonight, for example, we're having a meal adapted slightly from a recipe I got out of "Food and Wine" -- a salad with chick-peas, gardinera, salami, romaine, etc.)
It depends on how busy i am or if im in school..usually its whatever..
It would be hard to buy a month's worth of grocheries considering the dairy and veggies. I do however plan a weeks worth of meals, plus have some easy crock pot and conviencince foods handy all the time for the crazy days. (plan 7 meals to cook, 2-4 roasts or crock pot type meals, and 1-2 convenience things like pot pies or pizza) I don't plan anything except for dinner. I do not plan what day I cook what, I just go based on what I am in the mood for, I will pull the meat out of the freezer the night before.



I would like to add that It only takes a little bit of time. I go in the freezer to see what kinds of meat we have, then decide what to make in the week or shop for. At the store I will decide on some meals too. I just have a "half idea" when I am at the store. It takes only 10 minutes to decide what meals to shop for. You might like saving dinner dot com. Thye are a meal planning website, you basicly buy a menue and they give you a grochery list. The menue is based on your health needs. I did it once requesting only crock pot recepies (since they are soo easy)
I plan meals for a week at a time. I usually cook so I plan what I will cook and make my grocery list based on what meals I plan to cook, often I already have most of the ingredients, like spices, etc.



I tried coupons but it was so much work and there were never coupons for things I wanted, I cook a lot of homemade stuff, fresh veggies, meat, etc and coupons are usually for boxed stuff and things I don't eat so it was kind of pointless for me. I would save like $5.00 out of $90 and so I gave up on that.



However by cooking with fresh ingredients and not buying a lot of boxed food and pre-made meals and planning fresh meals I do save money.



I do buy snacks for my toddler though, like rice cakes and nutrigrain bars, etc.



I also make my 6 month old's baby food homemade with some of the fresh veggies and fruit I buy for my toddler so that saves a lot.
wow, I say you go girl to your friend, lol.

I do cut coupons, my last bill was $309, after coupons $190. woo-hoo!

My 6 year old doesn't start school until thurs, so for now we play it by ear, breakfast and lunch, most mornings we have french toast or choc chip pancakes and for lunch, sandwiches (tuna, PB%26amp;J, turkey, grilled cheese) but she has free range for the most part with her drawer in the fridge for in between snacks, it has fresh fruit, yogurt, string cheese etc.. all pretty healthy snacks.

But the snack cabinet with chips, cookies and fruit snacks are for after a meal only, and she still must ask.

As for dinner we usually plan ahead so I can thaw the meat out, so for example, before hunny leaves for work in the a.m I will say chicken for dinner and he says sure, lol. If I need something for dinner, like fresh garlic, DH stops on his way home from work, otherwise we usually grocery shop together as a family on weekends and use coupons.

But that's as far as it goes in my house.
Wow, even reading this made my head spin. I wish I could do this, but there's no way I could be so organized. Kudos to your friend.
I generally have an idea of what we will eat for meals before I go shopping...then as I go down the isles I think of more things to buy. I try to plan about 8-10 dinners, and we kind of play it by ear for breakfast and lunches. Right now my kids like muffins, nutrigrain bars and fruit-n-yogurt parfaits for breakfast. My older son has ham and cheese roll up, fruit, chips and a drink for lunch 5 days a week.