Meal planning, grocery shopping, and recipes

I have ONE stack of papers on my printer that need to be dealt with (Fly Lady would say it's a hot spot I guess and yes I am bragging that it is one little stack) but then there is all my recipes......and there are many...copied from the computer, ones that friends have given me and tons of magazines....

I've said before I like to cook and I get several magazines thatI love to flip through and find fun new recipes...We really have no more room for "hard copies" so John's idea was to scan them all once I go through the magazines and find the ones I want to keep and then put them on a file on the computer...I said to him, "Do you know how long that would take?"  He said, "Do 10 a night."  So I guess this a good idea but then what do you do when you are cooking...run to the computer when you need to look at the recipe?  If I print it out then that is defeating the purpose.  Still thinking on that one!

One of a Mother's biggest jobs has to be meal planning, grocery shopping, and couponing (if you do that).  I have never figured out a sure fire way to be organized in this department but here is my newest venture.  I wrote down every meal I could think of that we make.  I came up with 40 meals in all.  That makes for about 8 weeks worth of 5 meals/week.  I only like to plan 5 meals per week because we end up eating leftovers or doing a grill cheese or eating out.  I organized them by weeks and then googled on the computer and found a great meal planning calendar that I printed off.  It has meals listed on the left side and then the shopping list for those meals listed on the right.  So I wrote out our 8 weeks of meals and the ingredients needed for those meals on 8 calendars for 8 weeks.  Every weekend, I will get out the week's calendar and write down the ingredients that need to be bought on the weekly grocery list and then hang the calendar inside the kitchen cabinet...we will rotate through the 8 weeks worth of meals and I can add or change as necessary.  I use a magnetic notebook on the fridge to put the everyday kinds of stuff that we run out of (PB, toilet paper, jelly)...so adding the weekly meal ingredients will make for a hopefully, quick trip to the store.  And I don't have to think about it everyday...it's already planned out. 

So then I wondered how couponing and sale items would fit into all this.  Well, my plan (I've only been doing this now for a couple of weeks) is to continue to coupon for things we buy often and look for sales and BOGO items that I know we will eventually use...so then if Pork Chops are on the week's menu, I may have them already frozen...and wouldn't have to purchase that for the week.  I haven't quite conquered the coupon thing...it takes a lot of time which I don't seem to ever have enough of.  Still working on this!  For right now this is our plan.