We have eaten out far too much for far too long.

If I am completely open and honest about our eating out habits (which I am going to be) it has been a couple of years, probably at least 3 years plus, where we have bought food out every single night and a lot of times breakfast and lunch in addition to dinner.

We hardly ever actually go out to eat in the sense of going to a restaurant and sitting down to eat, but every single night for the past couple of years my husband has been stopping on his way home from work and buying us dinner.  He usually buys lunch out as well and for a long time he was also bringing me lunches at home on his lunch break.

How we picked up this bad habit and why we need to change it

I have never been the most efficient at consistently cooking but once I had my son my efficiency in this area plummeted to almost non-existent. And in some ways eating out has been a life saver when we were in extreme crisis mode and all my time was spent justifiably elsewhere.

However for some time now we have been adjusted to our “new normal” of life and don’t spend quite so much time in crisis mode the way we used to. But some bad habits have carried over to this season where things are more stable and steady, and eating out every single day for pretty much every single meal is one of those habits.

And this habit needs to change for very obvious reasons.

We are literally eating our income. Literally. Eating out all the time has definitely affected our budget and bottom line and not in the healthiest way.

And speaking of health, eating out has definitely taken a toll on both my husband and I healthwise as well.

We have gained weight, we lack energy (and five plus years of sleep deprivation isn’t helping us in the energy department), and we generally just don’t feel as good as we could.

As a result we don’t always cope with the challenges we face as a family in the best ways.

So for the sake of both our health and our budget, now that we are in a season where eating out is no longer a life saving option that we’re grateful for, but instead a bad habit that we’re struggling to rid ourselves of, I am hoping to slowly and steadily kick this bad habit to the curb.

Enter No Cook Freezer Meals

I have long loved the concept of having meals all ready to go in the freezer. However, I don’t have large chunks of time (or energy) to carve out to actually spend hours cooking meals from start to finish in advance and freezing them. (And cooking a meal from start to finish each day just isn’t an option time wise right now either).

So when I came across the idea of no cook freezer meals I was really intrigued. Basically the idea is that you prep all the ingredients for a meal and freeze them in a Ziploc bag all prepped and ready to go. Then all you have to do is thaw it out and throw it in the Crockpot or cook it the day you want to eat it.

I knew this was the way for me to break this bad eating out habit of ours. It requires some time and energy up front but not as much as doing a complete start to finish freezer cooking session. For the pay out I feel the amount of time and energy it requires is worth it.

My Plan

This past weekend I finally got around to it and set out to do my first no cook freezer session.

I chose two Crockpot meals I have made before and know that we like. I only chose two because I want to start small, be able to see some impact from it but not overwhelm myself to where I’m exhausted, get nothing else done and give up and go right back to buying out all the time.

I know from my previous failed attempts to quickly change bad habits that slow and steady is the way to go and the way to ensure that the bad habits stay away and remain replaced by the habit I desire to have instead.

My goal moving forward is to just prep and freeze two meals on the weekend (or during the week if some time happens to come free) for the next four weeks.

After those four weeks I plan on bumping it up from two meals to three meals prepped and frozen at a time. After four weeks of doing three meals I’ll bump it up to four meals and so on till I get to five meals prepped, frozen and ready to be cooked throughout the week.

This will leave room for leftovers one night and then a night of buying out as a treat (or for very hectic days). As far as the recipes I’m using I plan on using ones I’m familiar with and only adding two new recipes a month, every other week.

Going into the week I’m pretty excited to have two meals completely ready to go and all I have to do is thaw them out and pop them in the Crockpot. And I feel good that it wasn’t too overwhelming prepping the two meals, I wasn’t so exhausted from it that I wasn’t able to do anything else, and the cleanup wasn’t that bad.

I’m actually looking forward to doing two more meals next week. I have a feeling this “No cook freezer method” and increasing the amount of meals I do per week very slowly, and slowly adding new recipes to the mix is going to work very well for our family.

I will keep you updated on how it all goes!

Here’s the recipes I used this go around:

Let’s Talk:  What are your strategies for getting meals on the table?

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This past week was my annual (sometimes semi-annual) decluttering fest. About every six months to a year I get an itch  to go through our entire place and toss toss toss (really we donate it, but you get the idea).

Being organized is something that is really important to me, but its something that I have to work really hard at.  It doesn’t come naturally to me at all, therefore I have learned to take advantage of the times when I do feel the urge to purge (sorry couldn’t help it 🙂 ) and make as much headway as I can.

In the past I have tried to set a schedule such as every May and October to declutter but that just didn’t work. I’ve learned to just rely on myself to become overwhelmed at some point within the year (year after year it happens) and then I’m motivated to just get it done.

When I declutter and organize my focus is always functionality first, aesthetics a distant second.   In other words, the outcome may not always look the best, but it’s always what works the best for us.

Here’s a few before and after pictures from my most recent decluttering venture.

We live in a two bedroom one bath converted condo. It’s the perfect size for us, but not for having an abundance of stuff.  We had car seats and bases stored in both bedrooms, a crib mattress in the middle of one of the bedrooms and other stuff sitting unused and taking up precious space throughout.

Our biggest project was clearing out our pretty good sized storage closet and packing up all of Champion’s baby things (that we have high hopes of eventually being able to use for another baby or two or three.)

We got rid of a good amount of things that we just knew we weren’t going to use and were able to fit what we’re keeping in the storage closet. This instantly freed up space in the bedrooms, making them feel more organized as well.

Here’s our storage closet now.

Another problem area that we tackled was our entryway.

This is what greeted us (and any guests who came by) each time we came home.

We like to have a “launch pad/area” where we keep items that we take with us whenever we leave the house and items that we don’t want to forget (think library books, dishes to return etc.)

Before we were just keeping it there laying carelessly on the floor but now we have some very functional little cubbies and a freed up end table to use as our launch pad. This helps tremendously in getting us out the house in a more orderly fashion and also with continually forgetting items.

Picture  of Launch Pad now:

I don’t have any before pictures of the kitchen  because by the time I got there I was in a pretty good groove and forgot I was going to blog about it. Here’s an after picture.

I’m not able to get completely clear counter space but its functional therefore its good enough.

With our space more organized my mind is more free, my heart is more open to others, I feel more creative and frankly more motivated to enjoy life. I’m satisfied with it for now but I guarantee within six months to a year the itch will come back and I’ll take advantage of that motivated time to free us up even more.

(*Another reason I make it a point to periodically de-clutter is I have found the less “stuff” we have, the easier it is for the items we do use  to find their way back to their place, which makes maintaining an organized state much easier. Plus it allows this little one more room to explore 🙂 )

Resources: 

(*These are affiliate links:  Read Disclosure here.  I only link to and recommend resources I use and love!)

My hands down absolutely favorite book on organizing is:  Making Your Home a Haven: Strategies for the Domestically Challenged. This was the book that got me on the organized track.

A couple other good books are:

The Get Yourself Organized Project  (I’m reading this one right now)  This is currently $1.11 for the Kindle Version, as of this posting.  Be sure to check price before purchasing as they change often.

The Money Saving Mom’s Budget: Slash Your Spending, Pay Down Your Debt, Streamline Your Life, and Save Thousands a Year.  This book deals mostly with budgeting but emphasizes the importance of being organized to save money.  (Special Needs = Need to save money. The price on anything labeled special needs= ridiculous) Crystal Paine, the author of this book has an outstanding blog with some really good tips on living intentionally, decluttering, money saving, etc.  A great one to check out.

Let’s Talk:  Are you naturally organized or is it something you have to work at?  Any organizing tips to share?