Lists, lists and more lists....

With the bridal shower forcing me to clear out as much space in my fridge as possible, I decided this was as good a time as any to take a fresh look at our grocery list. I still don't have a whole lot in the way of processed food in the pantry, but there's enough in there that I want to get rid of it asap. So, in order to do that, I'm going to start making things to freeze for when the baby gets here. There's a bunch of stuff I can get rid of doing that alone like the cream of chicken soups and rice. I'm going to wait a few weeks before I start that process though. There's way to many other things on my to do list that need to be done first. I'm supposed to be switching out the white stuff for the brown stuff anyway. Booo. The white stuff just tastes so much better to me!

For this week, I made my grocery list. And for the most part I stuck to it. It's rare that I can go to the grocery store and buy exactly the items on the list. There's always a few "Ohh! I forgot to write that down!" or even worse "I really want that." My goal is to make it a functioning grocery list with prices and what my grocery total should be. I've wanted to do this for a long time but always get sidetracked. Here's hoping that doesn't happen this time around.

I am also going to update my daily to do list. While the general one I posted early works fine, I want a more detailed version with the approximate times it takes me to do each chore so I can prioritize my time a bit better. One where I can print out each day and go off of.

And finally, I want to finish up my yearly budget spreadsheet. That's right. Every bill we have is synced up to our bank account total by the due dates all the way through the year. There's extra spaces in there for surprises and what not. The sad thing is, we had the potential to save a lot of money this year. But, our credit card has a heavy balance from the remodel of the old house and moving to the new house. And few more surprises popped up in between all of that. We could still save a bunch, but we're going to have to bucket down.

Brian has already made the suggestion to eat lots of sandwiches this year. I can make bread and certain things are cheap to load that bread up with... like PB&J or tuna fish salad. Plus we have a lot of meat we can throw in the crockpot and make shredded beef and bbq sandwiches. It's just a matter of doing it and hoping that our pallets won't get so bored that we drop the idea altogether.

I'm also pricing out veggies. I have a lot of fruit in the freezer, but not much in the way of veggies. I just prefer those fresh, so I am trying to figure out what is cheap and go with those so we don't lose out on the good, healthy stuff.