It's the little things....

Back to school, back to the grind... I already miss the lazy days of summer.  And I especially miss being able to run errands whenever I want.  T is great at picking up the groceries to help out, but it requires a very SPECIFIC list.  I always tell him that its a given that he will either forget something entirely, or call me 3 times to ask questions while shopping.

I'm ridiculously anal about putting together a grocery list/meal plan for the week.  We stop at the store once on the weekend, that's it.  So I plan my meals for the whole week around what's on sale, what we've got stocked in the freezer, and their "Maggie Approval Rating".

To streamline the grocery shopping, I made a word doc that lists common items on our shopping list in our store's aisle order.  It makes it sooo much easier to cross things off as we go, because everything is grouped according to our path through the store.

Here's this week's list, unfolded after coming back from the store... I write the week's dishes in the top right corner of the paper.  This week, I had some Crock-pot pulled pork left over from the weekend, and plan to defrost a Mexican Lasagna that I made and froze right before school started.  The chicken parm recipe I use is from skinnytaste and the Lil Cheddar Meatloaves can be found on TastyKitchen

 (two of my GO-TO sites for new recipes).  

Sometimes it's the littlest things that make a big difference... I really wish I had made this list-system sooner!!