What's in my diaper bag (when my kids are 2.5 and 17 months)

So, speaking of spring cleaning, today I decided to clean out and wash my diaper bag!  It was becoming overrun with receipts and just needed a good cleaning.  Anyway, while I was unloading the contents, I decided to snap a quick pic and share what I always have in there for my non-baby-now-toddlers.

So obviously there's the essentials... I always keep two diapers (my boys were a 5 & a 4 but can wear each others if needed) and a mostly used bag of wipes so it's not too bulky in there.  I also have a free sample Huggies changing pad pack I've never used but keep in there because you never know when you'll encounter a nasty diaper table and have to do a change.  I always keep diaper supplies at the bottom of my bag's main section because these days we rarely need it and I'm accessing other things more often.

Then there's the mom stuff.  I keep my wallet, keys (unpictured), a small pad to jot down quick notes or numbers or lists and a pen as well as a few of my favorite Chick Fil A sauces, gum, and *ahem* emergency equipment a lady may need.  I keep most of these things in a zip pouch in the front of my bag away from the kid's stuff so I can find what I need quickly (and this pouch is hidden so they open it less if I leave my bag out).

Then there's snacks, of course!  I always keep a bag of peanut butter crackers because you never know who will be really hungry and need a little protein hit.  I keep at least 3 Dum Dums on me because they're GREAT distractions when I'm pushing two toddlers through a grocery store or they're stuck in a stroller.  Our bank gives Smarties.  I only ever ask for two but they usually give me more and I throw the extra ones in the bag in case I need to pull out the big guns and you know, get like, 5 seconds of relief from tears or tantrums.  ;)  And then there's the apple sauce squeezer that's in there mostly so I feel like if they need a healthy snack, they have it.  Depending on our outing, I usually toss a couple bags of goldfish or pretzels in the bag too.  My oldest is over carts at the store so giving him a bag of goldfish to hold and eat keeps his hands off things and on his food and makes him less apt to run ahead of me.  I keep big snacks (like bags of carb-y things) on top of diapers and easily accessible and then the little snacks I keep in mesh pockets that line the inside of the bag so they're more organized and not just loose in the bag.

The "you never know when you'll need it!" supplies which is hand wipes and napkins and sunscreen.  You never know when hands will get grubby and a sink or wipes won't be handy or a major spill will happen!  Or when you'll spend more time in the sunshine than you expected (a good problem to have!). I also keep these in mesh pockets inside my back.

And finally, boredom killers.  I rely on snacks and suckers to keep my kiddos occupied, but when we're out to eat or waiting in a Doctor's office, it's so great to have one of these little coloring books from the Target $1 bins handy.  The come with crayons, stickers, and a book to color in the handy little pack.  I toss it in it's only little zipper section I rarely use and it's there when I need it.

OH and lest I forget DRINKS.  My kids want their drinks all the time.  I pack up two sippy cups of milk or juice before we head out and put them on the outside pockets of the bag so they can grab them and then fill a water bottle up and stick it in the bag for when/if they run out of juice/milk.  Sometimes I also bring an extra juice box to fill a sippy cup back up if necessary.  Once I didn't bring a water bottle with me and we took an unplanned trip to hike some trails and play at the park.  J had already finished his cup of milk and E had finished his.  They'd also already knocked out the juice box.  My poor baby was begging for water the whole way to the grocery store and I felt so bad for him!  NEVER AGAIN!

The bag I carry is a Ju-Ju-Be* messenger bag in case you were wondering...  I love it because it's fun and bright and just slings across my chest.  A similar one can be found HERE (they don't carry the style I have any more).  I could have never afforded one but received it as a gift and love to use it because there's SO much storage space and different areas for different things.

And sometimes, since my kids are older and we go nicer places for a shorter period, I do bring a purse. I have a larger pink and cream stripe J Crew bag from last season I LOVE and I've been using it a lot lately.  I just toss in my wallet, gum, keys, snacks, a couple diapers, wipes, and their water bottles and we head out the door!  Older kids still require a lot of packing, but it's nice not to have to take extra clothes and formula or ice packs for breast milk and ALL of that anymore.

*This is not a post sponsored by Ju-Ju-Be and I'm not being paid for this.  These are my own thoughts and opinions and my bag was purchased as a gift from a family member several years ago.

Menu Planning Strategy

Hey, blogging buddies! I know it's been awhile and I know I completely have fallen off the 31 days bandwagon and I know I need to post about E's birthday party.  I've just been a bad blogger lately and hope to get back on the wagon very soon.  Today my sons are taking a great simultaneous nap and since that's really the only blogging time I have, I thought I'd swing in and share what I've spent nap time working on... menu planning!  Exciting, right?

My husband gets paid twice a month.  Around each pay check (2-3 days out) I start thinking about our new "batch" of money.  I always tweak our budgets with updates on monthly bills (since electric, gas, etc are always changing), note our cash flow, assess what we need (hair cuts? more diaper? new clothes?), how much we can save, etc.  Then, I schedule all my bills and feel good about life for the next couple of weeks until I start the cycle again.  And when that chore is done and I hang up my "CFO" of the family hat, I get to planning our grocery list because that one category in our budget gets the most money aside from bills but it can go quickly if I'm not careful and that requires organization!  Not to mention my husband loves knowing what dinner will be and when he can see our menu for the next few weeks on our calendar he is one happy dude.

the 2 year old likes the draw in my planner with me. he's so helpful.  ;)

So here's what I do.  It's SO basic, but if it can help you I'd be happy to help!  :)

First I think about what I cooked the last week that my kids really gobbled up and that I'm not sick of eating and want to cook again.  Lately that's been chili, pot roast, and chicken enchiladas.  Then of course you have everyone's favorites which is chicken quesidillas and breakfast for dinner.  The men in this family get so excited about these two meals and they're easy enough to make and shop for!  THEN, I open the laptop and click into Pinterest.  I resist the urge to repine every awesome thing my friends pinned and hit my "recipes" board.  I scan through for things I've pinned that have stayed on my mind.  This time after a particularly awful week of cooking dinners (even "under 30 minute dinners") because my newly-1-year-old was not happy at dinnertime to let me just cook, I clicked on everything crock pot.  I selected 6 new recipes for us to try.

New recipes have always been challenging when it comes to organization because they require you to save the recipe and possibly get new ingredients you may not have.  Lately I thought of a good system to organize my thoughts on new recipes.  Basically, I e-mail myself/my husband.  I took the 6 recipes and copied the title with a link to the original recipe and then copied the ingredients list under it.  Today there was not enough time in naps to scan through each thing while my kids were sleeping to see what I had or didn't have and figure out how to clump things together on my list in an organized way but now I have that e-mail on my phone and when there's time here and there I can sit down with my phone or a printed copy and write up my list.  Then, I'll also have that list I can stick on my fridge for the next few weeks so I can be aware of what I'll be using in the coming days if I decide to change anything up (which I do... we don't always stick to each day's dinner plan... sometimes we move meals around).

Another benefit of having the email in my phone with the links is that when it's time to make dinner I don't have to scroll through that pin board to find what I need, I can just click the link in my phone and have the recipe right there.  It's how I'm saving trees.  ;)

Yay, technology!

SO, now I have 14 meals listed for 15 days.  This is perfect because I know we'll get dinner at least 1-2 times and we'll eat lunch out on the weekend about 2 times so I'll have a little left over if I need to make a lunch or if I can't hit the grocery store next pay day.

So there you have it! Menu planning!  I also tend to write on my menu things I want to eat with the kids for lunch those weeks... Earth's Best chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, hot dogs, sandwiches... and I also write down if Josh has suggested we make something fun or unique like apple pie or apple cider or if I am hankering for pumpkin bread.  Then I know I'll need to get those things too when it comes to making my list.

And for the record, I do menu plan two weeks but I can't ever buy groceries for just two weeks.  I do one BIG trip where I get all my meat, grains, juice, etc and freeze the excess meat (buying in bulk saves me money!), but I have to go back at least once a week for more milk & produce because we go through these things too fast and they don't keep as long.  I know some people freeze produce but I literally have no room in my freezer so I can't be that person.  ;)

P.S. I posted on my good friend April's blog today about friendship!  It's basically a follow up to this post from August and you can read it here! :)

Saving Money on Groceries with Coupons & Organization

So this post is VERY long, but instead of breaking it into 3 posts, I decided to keep it combined into one larger post so it would be more cohesive.  I put the categories of the posts in bold font so if you're not interested in my journey (which I undertand completely) you can skip past that part to the part I discuss tips for saving money.  ;)  Enjoy!


The backstory of my journey into couponing...


When Josh and I were first married almost four years ago, we became very interested in couponing.  As a bachelor Josh had lived on instant mashed potatoes, frozen pizzas, and ramen noodles if he ate at home but mostly ate out.  During my college stint I lived on soup and eating out with Josh and when I quit living in the dorms I lived at home where food was readily available.  SO, coming into our marriage, Josh and I were a little clueless about menu planning and grocery shopping.  If I remember correctly, our first grocery shopping trip was around $300.  Some of that included buying spices and oils for the first time, but mostly it was just walking down the aisles and throwing things into the cart like rich people who had no regard for money (we were NOT rich).  We were shocked by the price of groceries and how our bill was consistently high.  After a few months, we decided to start doing some couponing and were able to clip a few here and there and save a few dollars.

I quit working in my third trimester when I was pregnant with our oldest and although we had always made our financial decisions based on having one income, we were still used to the excess money my pay checks brought in.  So, when I quit I spent a lot of time studying our bills, making and constantly revising budgets and searching for ways to save money.  And then I got more into making coupons work for me.  I found an old notebook, stole Josh's baseball card holders and set to work making an organized system to access coupons.  And when I say organized, I mean organized.  I'm the daughter of a man who loves spreadsheets and I channeled him when it came to making a spreadsheet for the notebook of every coupon it contained.  It was serious business.

But with all my efforts, I found myself able to save about $10-15 a grocery trip which was a huge success to me and worth my work.  Then someone told me Target puts coupons online and you can combine them with manufactour coupons and that saved me even more.  And then TLC released a little show about couponing that blew up and made everyone interested which helped me because I learned more about websites that help you find the best deals.  For me, Consumer Queen (more geared to Oklahoma couponers) became a place I went regularly and before I knew it I was getting 6 boxes of whole wheat Ronzoni pasta for free and boxes of Pop Tarts for $.50.

Couponing changed for me with kids.  J was around and about 8 months when I discovered Consumer Queen and with the help of Josh watching him, I managed to do a lot of good work and save us a lot of money ($10-$15 at Target and up to 90% on various items at Homeland).  The one thing the TLC coupon show made me believe is that it was possible to get all my groceries free.  I did a little research and no stores in Oklahoma let you triple coupons nor do they double more than one of the same coupon in that shopping trip.  There also is no store that lets you apply extra savings from coupons outside of the price of the item toward the total bill.  If you item is $1 and the coupon is for $2 you don't get an extra magical dollar towards your meat.  I could never have completely free groceries because we could never live on pasta, pop tarts, cereal, salsa, or V8 (among other things).

Our family spends around $40 a week on produce because it's important to us to eat a lot of veggies and fruits.  We also spend about $40 a week on meat.  I knew for the 4 of us I wanted a target weekly grocery budget of $100 which would give us $200 a check for food and I built $50 reserve for milk and fill in groceries (because we buy our milk locally at a store called Braums and we're always running out of bananas).  That leaves $20 for a lot of things (and I usually go over now that I have an 8 month old and a 22 month old - it can just be really hard to find time to coupon let alone to go to the grocery store and be organized).

So that's the background with me and couponing and my warning.  This isn't a post that will tell you how to get groceries for free and work the system.  It's just a post about how I do my best to save the most money I can and how that can be done in a realistic way for me.  I have about one hour a week I can clip, file, and organize my coupons.  I'm trying now to carve out another hour to get back on Consumer Queen's site to find ways to save more and get more freebies and low price items at Homeland (except Pop Tarts... I went crazy with those and I'm not pregnant anymore so they aren't easily justified!).  So without further ado...

Tips for saving when you can't use a coupon...

MEAT
Meat is expensive.  We prefer to buy organic meat but if we can't be buy all natural.  There's nothing wrong with normal meat and we've bought our share of it, and the honest truth is that while I do care about the organic label because it makes me feel good about myself, I mostly just think an organic cut of meat from the butcher produces a lot better flavor and a more moist roast or chicken breast or whatever.

Chicken
A Whole Foods recently opened somewhat close to where we live and we're obsessed with the butcher there.  But it's expensive.  Organic chicken breast is $6.99 a pound and I used 3-4lbs of chicken breast in my cooking every two weeks.  So, to save money I started buying a whole rotiserie chicken while we're at Whole Foods.  They're $8.99 and delicious.  The chicken becomes our dinner that night and then that night I debone it and pack up the shredded meat which is enough for two casseroles and boil the bones with veggies for a ton of stock.  I know I'll still need raw chicken for simple baked meals (like my parm ranch chicken) so I go to Target and buy a pound or two of their all natural chicken for $4.99 a pound.  I found that Sunflower Market sells all natural chicken for $1.99 a pound if you buy in bulk (which I'm all about) but every time I've bought that chicken I've felt like the flavor is off.  I've also found the bag is really slimy and that freaks me out.  So that's chicken.

Sales
The BEST advice I can give a person looking to save money on meat is to shop sales.  Whole Foods has amazing meat sales every few months.  Earlier this year they sold whole chickens for $.99 a pound.  $.99!!!  For an organic whole chicken!  I KICK myself all the time for not buying 10 to freeze.  Recently, Whole Foods also sold pre-made, low fat hamburger patties for $.99 a pound.  Again, organic for $.99!!!  Amazing.  Things like that are great because they're formed to patties but they're still ground beef so you could throw them in your pan, break it up and make tacos.  If you happen upon a sale with meat for a steal of a price, stock up and freeze.  It's good for 3 months, so don't go too crazy, but just assess what you'd use in 3 months and then buy!  I also buy a lot of pork roasts for pork carnitas and pulled pork and Whole Foods will put theirs on sale from $5.99/lb to $1.99/lb occassionally and when they do I buy several pounds and have the butcher wrap them sepearately so I can just throw them in the freezer.

PRODUCE
Produce isn't so simple as "buy cheap and freeze!" because it's fresh and doesn't last.  I'm also less picky about organic produce.  Bananas, for example, are fine in any state to me.  Target usually has bananas for around $.60/lb.  We eat at least 12 bananas a week here so when I go to the store I buy two big groups - one yellow w/ no brown and one a little greener.  That lasts us a week.  I like to buy organic berries, but ONLY if their on sale.  Berries are a treat here.  Grapes are about $1.50/lb now at Whole Foods or Target and we LOVE grapes.  I always buy a big bag and it'll last us a week.  At this time of year I also like to buy one melon - cantaloupe or watermelon.  I'll usually buy whatever is cheaper based on how ambitious I feel (because cutting a watermelon is an undertaking).  I then always buy carrots, green beans, an onion, a clove of garlic & broccoli.  These are just staples for us.  I also love avocado and went on a huge avocado bender lately.  Once I bought 6 for 1 week.  At $.99 per that was a little nuts.  Now I search for the best price on avocados in the ads, decide ahead of time if we'll make guac and limit myself to 1 or 2 avocados a week (so I end up buying 3-4 a week at around $.69/per).

The best advice I can give for saving money on produce is to "break it down" when you get home.  Some produce isn't supposed to be washed until right before you eat it but that doesn't mean you can't get it as close to ready as possible.  I pluck all my grapes off the vine and put them in tupperwear so they're ready to wash and go.  I also cute lettuce or celery or melons -- anything that needs to be cut and is challenging.  These things are also great to do when Josh is home or else I might not get it done with two little ones under my feet!  Then I store these in tupperwear as well.  This makes it just as easy to give my kids grapes or melon as it is to give them a bag of goldfish.  Likewise, it makes it easier for me to choose fruits and veggies over quick, unhealthy, fattening snacks (and my weigh ins always go better the weeks we're stocked in fruit!).  I find that if I don't break down my fruit or veggies I may forget about them or I won't want to take the time for them later on and they'll spoil and it'll be a waste.

Which brings us to...

My advice regarding coupons...


First things first! Go through your ads and clip like a mad woman.  This takes the longest amount of time for me and I tend to do it either on a night Josh goes to bed earlier or while we're watching something on TV I'm semi-interested in but not all about.  I used to leave things behind but now I try to catch everything because sometimes things that I wouldn't normally buy are free at a local grocer with their doubling the coupon.  If I don't have time to clip it all, I tuck my ad pages into the notebooks pockets when I'm done in case I need something later.  Then I just throw all the coupons in a pile.

My notebook & my pile... not too fancy (and the bad lighting from my dining room light in the late night hours)!

Within my notebook there are dividers.  My sections are:

Baby
Hygene
Wellness
Dry
Cold
Liquid
Toiletries
Organizing
Cleaning
Misc

Within those divider categories I like to try to be even more organized if possible.  I keep all the deoderant coupons in the same page of hygene and keep the toothpaste together, etc.

So, keeping my sections in mind, I stack the coupons by category into new piles and then sort them for the pages.  The baby stuff actually stays in front of a folder because it's the most accessed (I hate paying more than $.25/per diaper).  It usually looks something like this.

This is the "shaving" section...

Toiletries...

Organizing...

And that's how I organize the notebook!

But I think there's more to saving than clipping coupons.  Especially for me.  If I go to the store without a list I not only forget tons of things, I also spend way too much money.  So, at least twice a month (usually a few days before pay day) I sit down to make a menu and then fill my lists with what I need to cook as well as what else we need.  My menu planning usually means consulting Pinterest.  I like to try new things a few times a month and it's also a good way to find some of our new favorites I haven't memorized yet.

I sometimes go to three stores, but if I can't I just go to Target because I can get the best deals on everything in one place there.  I also hate buying things aside from meat/produce at Whole Foods and hate buying produce at Crest.  I separate my list into the stores I need to go and what I'll need from each store.  If I end up just at Target, it's all still together, but if I manage to go to each store, I have it all there isolated.

So that's my story.  That's how I save money on groceries.  I have to stay organized in my menu planning and list making, my coupon clipping and organizing, and I have to stay commited to checking what's on sale.  Saving money takes work.  To be truly successful and save us at least $50 a month I'm likely to put 3-4 hours of work into all of this each month (not including shopping).  All in all, that's not so bad, right?  If I were paid by the hour it'd be above minimum wage and when I save even more it's an even better value!  Saving is important to us and so is staying on budget.  Hopefully if you're looking to save on groceries, these ideas or tips will help you too!

Oh, and one more note, I also have a Target Red card.  Not the credit card kind, just the debit kind so it comes out of my checking account.  I LOVE it.  I save 5% but that adds up.  Especially on diapers.  The other day I shopped for 2 weeks because I was doing make ahead meals.  My total at check out was $230 but after my coupons and Red car savings I was down to just over $200.

And also, do you have any tips?  I've done this for 3 years or so now, but I've learned slowly and I feel like there is so much more to learn!  I'd love to devote more time to couponing and save even more money, but with everything else there is to do, I'm thankful to be able to save a little.