Inspired by many of my friends posting tonight about their kids singing “Let It Go” join me on a brand new series titled… “Let It Go”.

Sometimes I have a hard time letting things go…. Over the next several weeks join me on my new series of letting things go. From cooking, to parenting styles, lessons on forgiveness, and spring cleaning!

I am definitely the planning ahead of time type of girl.  I cannot stand anything more than not knowing what I’m going to be doing in a particular day. In fact I found a very nifty app called the Cozi Calendar which has all but changed my life, and you might want to check out if you’re the kind of person who is like me… Everything from school activities to evening activities is completely synchronized between my husband and I’s iPhones. Now there is never the, “You never told me that we had xyz going on tonight…” Seriously, filling in my tasks, and outings in my calendar/planner gives me one of the greatest joys in life. (Moreover I do not argue with you that I am a weirdo.)

For years, I have definitely been the meal planning type of wife and mom. Oftentimes I’m planning  at least a week in advance if not a few weeks and sometimes even a whole month. I would be hardly caught dead ordering fast food for the night, (and I do not judge those of you who do) although the occasional pizza delivery or Chipotle slips, but the truth is, I absolutely LOVE cooking. In my next life I am definitely going to be an executive gourmet chef, or maybe start a food blog… or maybe this will start turning into a food blog!

I’ve never quite understood women who didn’t meal plan and thought to myself, “How did they know what to eat for dinner?”

I love having my dinners for the week written very neatly in my calendar, and on my meal chalkboard next to my stove with hyperlinks to the menus that I am going use for that night.

What is happening though is that generally on Fridays or Saturdays after work I would hit the grocery store with my list of items that I needed to buy for the next week or two. But of course the inevitable happens. Schedules get overloaded, emergencies come up and I’m not having the time to prepare these extravagant meals… So we would either call for pizza or make something completely different using only a quarter or half of the ingredients I had allotted for that particular day.

Thanks to my church I now keep a budget. Like a corporate style budget for my family. While seeing what our actuals were for the month of March I discovered that we spent over $600 on groceries! Yes you read that right… for a family of THREE and that was ONLY groceries! I hang my head in shame. I can tell you we probably did not eat $600 dollars’ worth of groceries…

So… my husband and I decided to alter our plans to be a tad more on the fly! Sure I still have ideas of what I want to make for the week, or the next several days, but instead of shopping for a whole week or month, I now just get what we needed for a particular night or the next couple nights, and then using the left over ingredients up in the next few nights dinners. Plus on the account of the fact that we have so much venison and poultry there is no reason to be spending that much in groceries.

So far we’re already drastically under March’s budget actuals. (Moreover we are only a third through April!) We have a lot less waste, and there is more room for creativity on my part. I have even been throwing together dishes that sound good in my head without following any kind of recipe and its really freeing. Absolutely freeing.

Stay tuned my friends to the series, “Let It Go” over the next few weeks.  What are some of the things you need to let go of? Comment below!