Once a Month Shopping

My inspiration here is the concept of once a month cooking. It's based on the idea of an upfront investment of time and energy, saving you oodles of time and inconvenience for the rest of the month. There is a wealth of information and menu plans available on the interwebs. Unfortunately, its an idea that does not appeal to me in the slightest. Not a huge fan of eating from the freezer. Once in a while, sure. But, in general, I prefer my meals to be freshly prepared.

However, I absolutely loathe how much time we spend on our weekly meal planning and grocery shopping. It is many hours of my Sunday (for the shopping) and a constant on-going dialogue on what our next menu will be. God forbid, we are away for a weekend, or something comes up and the process doesn't happen. It leaves us out of sorts all week long.

Part of this is my fault. The Sunday shopping is overly complicated by multiple stops. At a minimum its the Farmer's Market and our local coop. There are also regular adhoc trips to Costco, bakeries, Whole Foods, etc,. Anyway you slice it, it seems to take at least 2 hours, usually 3. Honestly, its a pain in the keister.

But I don't want to give up where my food comes from. I like my food. It's good. It stinks that its such a complicated process to procure it, but I'll deal with that inconvenience in lieu of eating food I'd rather not think about the origins of. Thank goodness we aren't hunter gatherers anymore. How complicated would that be?

That doesn't mean I can't streamline though. Or at least try to.

So, Im playing with this idea of once a month shopping. Same principle as the cooking. More time up front. Less hassle later.  It does require a higher degree of organization, but only once a month. I can probably handle that.

We drew up a monthly meal plan, starting this Sunday September 4th, through the end of September. To begin with that involved making a new spreadsheet (love spreadsheets) with a list of all the meals we regularly eat.  Then we took into account our current known plans for the month (like when I'll be out of town),  and our Friday Pizza Night. Saturdays are designated as 'out', which will be our flex days for plans, leftovers, or I added a couple of auxiliary meals if we need/want them.

Just the main dishes are planned. Side dishes (mostly vegetables around here) will be flexible based on what comes in our weekly CSA box and what we have on hand.

Not exactly written in stone, but I think a good start. We chose  24 meals in total. I made a corresponding shopping list, and this Sunday we are going to do the mother of all trips. My goal is not to completely eliminate weekly shopping. I think that is somewhat impossible because of things like milk, and such. But to make it a much more inconsequential event; Not the focal point of Sunday.
I'm shooting for one stop a week, and less than an hour total time investment.

The next question is how is that going to impact our grocery budget? Technically speaking it shouldn't. We are just taking all the costs in the front of the month, as opposed to spreading it out. I'm a little concerned about spending money now, and then just spending more later. As part of my September goals, I'll have to keep pretty close tabs on it.