How I Make a Grocery List

On Wednesday afternoon at naptime, you can usually find me creating my grocery list for shopping on Thursday. In central Iowa, most of the grocery stores change their ads on Tuesday or Wednesday so it makes sense for me to make my list on Wednesday afternoon for the sales of that coming week. I try and get all my supplies in one place so it goes quickly and easily. When I make my grocery list I have these items on hand:

1. My iPad or computer, to check any ads I do not have physically in front of me and to find any recipes I need online. 
2. Any ads that I have received in the mail. 
3. My binder of regular recipes our family enjoys.
4. The current cookbook I using to test recipes on my family.
5. Our schedule for the coming week.
6. The whiteboard list of food items we ran out of or are low on.
7. Last week's menu.
8. A fresh sheet of paper for my new menu and grocery list.

Once I have everything gathered together I start making my list.

1. The first thing I do is check to see what I may not have made yet from the previous week's menu. Sometimes we have something come up so that we do not follow our menu exactly as planned, we get invited over to Grandma's for dinner or Hubby gets a hankering for something off-menu. Then I push an unused menu item forward to the next week so we do not waste any ingredients. For instance, this week, I am pushing homemade pizza forward because when I went to make it last week I found that we were out of mozzarella cheese. This is an item we usually stock up on at Sam's Club and keep in our deep freeze, and I thought we had some but I didn't check and was wrong. So I will get some cheese this week and push that recipe forward.

2. Next, I add anything to the list that we have written on our kitchen whiteboard that we discovered we ran out of during the week. This week I have put brown rice and cooking spray on the list from the whiteboard. These are staples that we always have around, but they are not on the list every week, so I need to make a note to stock up when we run low.

3. At this point, I also add items that we regularly pick up every week. This includes things like milk, bread, cereal, eggs, cheese, fruit, vegetables, etc. Some of these I don't pick up every week, but I check to see where we are at. This week we have plenty of onions, garlic, and potatoes, but we are getting low on apples. We need baby carrots every week, and I rotate which other veggies I have in our weekly box of cut veggies to put in lunches or just have out at meals. 

4. Now I look at our weekly schedule to see what is going on for sure. When I made our menu for this week I did not put down anything for tonight because we are going to the Awana Grand Prix and Hot Dog Dinner, woohoo for no cooking for Mom! I also look to see when we have baseball games or other early evening activities so I can plan quick meals for cooking, and that I know the boys will not have a problem eating.

5. Then it is time to go to Hy-Vee's website and look at their weekly ad. There I will see what specials I want to make sure not to miss and see if it will affect the weekly menu at all. This week it is a bit early for sweet corn, but they are having a good special Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with 4 ears for $1. So I will take advantage of this special and we will plan to have sweet corn with some kebabs over the weekend.

6. Now I fill in the rest of my menu with dinner items for seven days of the week, or whichever days are not taken with alternate dinner plans. I will try to include at least one new trial menu item that we haven't had before. I attempt to have at least one vegetarian meal each week. In the summer, we try to grill at least once a week, and in the winter we try to have a soup at least once a week. I also try not to repeat dinner items too often but keep favorites every couple of weeks. Under each dinner item on the menu I fill in which ingredients we are in need of to make sure we are able to complete the recipe. 

7. At this point, the menu is finished, but I still have the ads coming in the mail on Wednesday night. I will go through these ads to see if there is anything on my list that is on sale at another store for a cheaper price than Hy-Vee. Then I will bring my ad along shopping to Hy-Vee because they will match a lower price in an ad and I take advantage of that instead of shopping at more than two stores because two stores are plenty.

Since I shop at two different stores I have a code for which store each item will come from. If the item is underlined then I am planning to purchase it at Aldi, and if there is no underline I plan to purchase the item at Hy-Vee. I always shop at Aldi first in case I find a new item at Aldi that I can purchase more cheaply and take off of my Hy-Vee list. Also, Aldi is smaller and once in a while they are out of an item, and when this happens then I end up purchasing said item at Hy-Vee.

This is generally how I create my grocery list and it has worked well for quite some time. I rarely forget something that we need and do my best to stay within our monthly budget. It feels harder all the time to stay within the budget that we have set for ourselves, which has been $500.00 per month. What is your monthly grocery budget?