OPTED Magazine

For a few months, our household had a terrible track record of making a trip to the grocery store several days during the week, despite using a batch task system to combine this errand with others.  Even despite a weekly meal plan to plan for dinners and a leftovers schedule, we lacked a system to have everything we needed available in our fridge, freezer, and cabinets to make the evening meal complete.

Thus, the Sunday cooking plan and ongoing needs list.

First, we created a form to post on the fridge to act as a running list of items we needed to stock up on in the upcoming weekend.  Every time something was running low such as a spice or cereal, it was added to the list.  Rather than return from the grocery store and realize our mental reminder didn’t kick in, we had a comprehensive list of everything we needed.

Second, Sunday became “meal plan” day.  We sat down for about 10 minutes and planned out the meals for the week, factoring in any anomalies in our schedules that required a quick meal or evenings where we’d be out with friends.  We’d return to the kitchen and take note of any ingredients that needed to be purchased for the week to prepare those dishes.  All of that information was added to the bottom of our weekly ongoing needs list and we had a complete shopping guide for our Sunday shopping.

As an added bonus, our list allowed us to match up items with the coupons from the Sunday paper, saving us money on our purchases.  While the plan has not always been 100% effective (we’ve changed our minds a few times about our cravings for a certain meal) for the most part, this strategy has saved both time and money.

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1. Balancing relaxation and productivity on a weekend
2. Batch tasks to save time and achieve maximum efficiency
3. Completing essential tasks on your to do list first
4. Use the blitz approach for your to-do list