Meal Plan/ Coupon Binder

I have decided to start couponing. Don't worry you will not see me on any tv shows. But now that I have more time I am planning ahead with my meals and if I am going to do that might as well use some coupons. Every little bit counts right?

So, to keep everything organized I made a binder for it all. This was a cheap little project because we save all our office/school supplies and re-use them. I used dividers and page protectors and organized as follows:
1. Grocery list: I formatted and printed off a grocery list outline. I like printed lists but that would be crazy so the outline should keep everything organized before I go to the store and should limit last minute runs to pick up one thing. This is at the front of the binder so when I think of something needed I can write it down real fast.
2. Meal plan list: The best way to save money at the store is to plan your meals a head of time, other wise you just buy junk. This also will help to you make healthy meals. So this page has 7 spots for 7 days. I put the date of the meal, what it is, and what is needed (this will help make the grocery list after the planning). Plus with this planning if you have 2 meals that need the same ingredient you can cut down on prep time. example: grilled chicken- you can plan ahead and grill enough for both nights and then freeze the extra or have the meals one day after the other.
3. Recipe pages: I like to look up new recipes online but now that my computer is on a different floor than my kitchen it makes it hard to run back and forth. We have an ipad but usually I have to fight my husband for it and it always goes missing halfway through my cooking. So, to make life easier any meals that are new or that I can never remember the ingredient amounts for I will write on the recipe outlines. I made it really simple: Name of meal, ingredient list, directions. I have 2 recipes per page.

I printed extras of these pages but also saved them on my computer under their own file for easy find and print later

Next for coupons:

I broke my coupons into 3 groups: Food, non-food, store specific
Each group has its own page protector- I tried writing on the outside of the protectors with dry erase markers but it just wipes off, so I will use a permanent marker once I can find mine :)

Now when writing my grocery list I will pull out the coupons and star the items I have a coupon for.

Yay! I feel so productive. Now to write my meal plan and then off to the Gym!