Wednesday, November 10, 2010

well, duh

one of my goals for the year was to become a true coupon lady
and i think i'm off to a good start
besides success at cvs last weekend
i also had mad success at harris teeter yesterday

113.82 worth of groceries for 53.98 
i saved 59.85!
highlights include:

2 packages of Martha White muffin mix: $.05 (reg price 2.36)
10 boxes of Barilla pasta: $6 (reg price $15)
7th Generation dish soap: free (reg price $2.99)
3 boxes of Hamburger Helper: $1.50 (reg price $5.55)
Bic Multi-Purpose Lighter: 1.29 (reg price $4.29)

that was with very little effort, so i'm excited to see what will happen as i begin getting into it a little more!  some coupon gurus save as much as 90% on an average trip.  over the last month or so i've been averaging 50% or so...i'm going to try to up it to at least 75% over the next month or two.

now onto my duh! moment, which does strangely correspond to the above :)

it occurred to me the other day
that my jobs (which i'm loving)
while by nature are "set my own hours" type gigs
are sometimes scheduled a little too tightly
for me to eat healthy meals
and definitely no time to cook them

and yes,
my clients are *wonderful* about saying
"please help yourself to anything in the fridge"
and i do
gratefully

but there are days that there's nothing in the fridge that i like
or there's not much of whatever meal is left
or i don't want to open a whole new package of whatever freezer meal looks good
or there's a ton of junk food in the house and i wind up eating IT because nothing else appeals

this sometimes causes me to hit the drive-thru harder than i want
either between jobs because i'm starving
or after a job because what i had wasn't filling

so here's my future solution
i'm spending one afternoon a week in the kitchen
(besides cooking on other occasions)
where i'll make one from-scratch awesome recipe
that i can divide into a meal for that day, a meal for later that week, and a portion to be frozen
and at the same time
i'll make one "convenience food"
also to freeze into individual portions
so that i can stick it in the car on my way to a job
and if i get there and they have awesome options: fantastic
i have a meal for another day that week
and if they don't?
well, thawed out hamburger helper made with organic beef
is still much better than a 10 pm trip through mcdonalds.
(and cheaper too!)

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2 comments:

Brooke said...

gotta love a good plan!!! :) and kudos to you for your savy couponing skills!

Nicole said...

I think you have an AWESOME plan!