Grocery shopping and meal planning don’t come naturally for me. 😥 I’m easily overwhelmed by all the options at a grocery store and almost always forget a kitchen necessity if I’m relying on my brain alone.

👇 With much experimenting, here are 5 tools I’ve found to help me streamline these sometimes stressful tasks.

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🎉 I run out of groceries, I add them to a reusable board on the refrigerator in the moment so that when it comes time to grocery shop, I don't have to recall all the random items I ran out of over the week. This is also a helpful communication tool between partners/roommates. You can let them know you're out of soy sauce by writing it on the board without having to remember to tell them you're out of soy sauce!

​This is the board I use, but you can use any reusable board.

🎉 I update a Google Doc each week with breakfast, snack, and dinner ideas. I print it out and stick it on the fridge so I don’t have to recall what my options are in the moment when hunger strikes.

🎉 I recently discovered the app Whisk and have found it helpful for discovering recipes and then easily making a grocery list from the recipe I chose. You can easily add recipes that you find anywhere on the web by copy and pasting the url into the app. The only downside is that everything has to be done from your phone, not a computer. I’ve tried a number of different methods for collecting recipes and this is my favorite so far!

🎉 I use Trello (you could use any notes app or a piece of paper) to keep a list of staples and essentials that I want to make sure we always have in stock (things like canned beans, cheese, olive oil, coffee, etc.) Then when its time to make my weekly grocery list, I can quickly run through this list to see if we’re running low on anything that needs to be restocked.

🎉 Lastly, I order 90% of my groceries online. I love using Misfits Market and Amazon Fresh but you can use any service that works for you. Depending on the store you can either get the groceries delivered or have them ready for pick-up. My days of roaming grocery store aisles are minimal since this is overwhelming for me (and even more so now that I’m wearing a baby on my chest!).

If you want to see what these ideas look like in real life, check out this IG Reel I made.

⌚️ Sitting down to do my meal planning and grocery shopping takes about 2 hours each week. That can feel like a chunk of time in the moment, but think about how long it takes you to drive to a grocery store, roam the aisles, and then return a few more times that week when you realize you ran out of something important.

👉 What are some of your favorite grocery and meal planning tips? I’m always looking for new ones!

I hope you’ve had a wonderful February. I’m now the mommy of an almost 4 month old 😱 and am starting to find my groove with balancing full-time mommying while also working on my business. I hope to be sending more emails again soon!

Until next time…. hi, bye, you’re the best, diet-culture sucks, people of all body sizes deserve to be treated with dignity, and I hope you have an enjoyable grocery shopping experience this week!

❤️

Chelsea

P.S. Might feel random, but I just launched a new service - YNAB Coaching - which is all about budgeting and money. I'll definitely be sending more information soon, but feel free to check out my new webpage!