Take control of your time and money with a master grocery list (+ free printable)
Today I’m sharing 3 simple steps to create your master grocery list to help reduce your grocery shop trips and save some money!
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ADDITIONAL POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY!
Grab your supplies
You’re going to need:
The calendar for the upcoming month
3 pieces of paper: 1 for your list of dinner ideas, 1 for your capsule breakfast and lunch, and a 3rd to draft a grocery list
Pen or pencil
Something to hold recipes in and your plan (unless you’re planning on using a digital calendar)
Choose your meals and develop a monthly meal plan
The key to designing your own master grocery list is identifying the meals you will make for your family. Check out this post for a more in depth blog on how to meal plan for the month, along with this post for capsule menus.
Write down 10-15 dinner ideas and pull recipes for each.
Decide on your capsule breakfast and lunch menu. For us breakfast and lunch are not fancy, but a set 2-5 meals that I rotate through during the month.
On your calendar simply start with the first dinner menu item for whatever day you’re starting on and then go down your dinner menu list adding one dinner plan per day. When you get to the end of the list simply start over from the beginning.
Refer to recipes
After writing down all your dinners for the month and having a solid understanding of what your family eats for breakfast and lunch, it’s time to look at the ingredients you’re going to need to pick up.
On your third blank piece of paper, write the headings. Choose whatever works for you and your family:
Fruit
Vegetables
Dairy
Grain
Meat, poultry fish
Pantry
Misc.
Drinks
Canned
Frozen food
Work through recipe by recipe, writing down the ingredients you will need to complete each one. If you decided on planning for 15 meals you should only need to account for ingredients in a recipe once. If less, be sure to include the additional items you will need for the repeated meal. I like to write down the ingredient then add a slash beside it to mark how many of that ingredient a recipe called for. At the end when designing my final copy of my master grocery list I simply add up the number of slashes to write down the total number of an ingredient I will need to pick up.
After you have gone through each recipe, now look at your breakfast and lunch menu and record what items you will need to pick up for those. By the end of this exercise you should have a pretty complete (probably messy) list of what you will need.
Master List
The bare bones copy of my list! Download and print to make your own.
Develop a good copy of your list
Open google sheets, Apple spreadsheet or Microsoft Excel and start your spreadsheet. Check the above picture for an example of a barebones grocery list that I developed. After you have developed a good copy, I like to laminate mine and then use a wet erase marker when I grocery shop. Saves money on paper and ink, which just makes me happy.
And there you have it!
Pull your recipes together, write down the ingredients to each one, develop a good copy and you’re set! Remember that grocery lists will change depending on the season, if you use coupons, frequent farmers markets, have community sourced agriculture or want to shop at several different locations (all totally fine!). Remember the beauty of having this type of meal planning and master grocery list is you have all the ingredients in your house to make any of the meals you’ve written down. If you don’t feel like making the previously scheduled dinner you can take your pick of what you have left on your calendar!
If you try this method let me know how it worked out for you!
Lauren
