Where did you start??

[Hbrmom81]

I am despiratly trying to sart my family on getting into a frugal sort of routine. i got all the makings for a household notebook and its not done yet! I just dont know where to start and how to get everyone on track I want to develop meal planning, budgeting, couponing, chore schedules etc into our lives! But it all seems over whelming. Plus learning to cook for me is hard I have no cooking skills and am despiratly trying i just have no talent in homemaking. To top it all off I work full time! So just looking for some words of wisdom and insight on how and what you do and where I should start and what things you have implemented that worked and those that didnt! Also any referneces such as websites and books are welcomed! I do love to read and research!

Thanks sooooo much !
Heather

[mek42]

Learning to cook well takes practice and, yes, there will be failures. What sorts of things would you especially like to make? I'm sure folks here will help let you know what is easier or harder as initial cooking attempts. The key thing to cooking is to remember that, except for most crockpot recipes, cooking is an active endeavor - you don't want to wait until the fire trucks arrive to figure out the steaks are done!

Sounds like you're trying to bite off everything at once. Slow down and figure out one thing at a time. Lifestyle change is not easy. Get one thing down then move on to another. Trying to change everything at once is just going to be worse for failure and backsliding.

We started by not going out to eat nearly as often as we used to. Part of this was learning to cook. An initial step we made, though, was instead of going out or doing fast food, we'd go to the pre-made section of the grocery store. This tends to be in between restaurant and make it yourself prices.

Good luck and welcome to FV!

[sunshine]

Try here for cooking lessons : Cooking for Beginners, Quick and Easy Cooking - Recipelink.com

And here for some menu plans, recipes, etc. : CheapCooking.com: Cheap Quick Easy Recipes for your Family, Cheap Healthy Recipes, Grocery List on a Budget

[krbshappy71]

It sounds to me like you are trying to bite off quite a bit for just starting up. I would suggest picking one item to learn about/apply rather than tackling an entire home manual in the beginning.

If your family is used to eating out a lot, shoot for X number of days of eating at home.
For example:
In the beginning I had Friday as pizza night, Saturday and Sunday were eating out nights, but the work week was dinner at home at the table. Then I changed out-or-deliver pizza night to "take and bake" pizza. Then I changed pizza night to "grocery store frozen pizza".

Then, I started purposely planning a larger meal on Thursday, to have really yummy leftovers on Friday, and moving "pizza night" to Saturday. You can probably guess that by now there isn't a pizza night, nor is there an eating out night. I do purchase frozen pizzas here and there as a treat but I really had to wean out the dining out.

Sorry this is long, my point is try to choose something to focus on to break in the family slowly. (unless you are in crisis mode of course)

[gapeach]

Welcome to Frugal Village. Flylady.net is a good site to help with decluttering and implementing habits. Good luck.

[frugal is fun]

I agree, pick one area to start with....so What do YOU want to start with? is it cooking & meal planning, cutting expenses, stockpiling, getting the family on board with chores?

Once you decide, I would have a family meeting and explain what you would like to happen and the help expected from ALL family members.

I'm a single full time working mom and the best thing I did was to start cooking on the weekends in preparation for the week. Do small simple chores before you go to bed and when you get up in the morning. Whether its putting dishes away, sweeping the floor, folding laundry whatever. Doing a few little tasks spread out over the entire week is much easier than trying to tackle everything in one day. At least this is my experience.

good luck!

[frugal is fun]

Welcome to Frugal Village. Flylady.net is a good site to help with decluttering and implementing habits. Good luck.

Yes yes yes! I forgot about the flylady but thats basically where I started. I don't do everything she suggests but read though it, take what you want and leave what you don't. Alot of great tips!

[monkeywrangler71]

Beginning with an entire overhaul would be far to overwhelming to be successful. If I were you, I would begin with the meal planning, it is the area that seems to have the biggest impact, from both a financial and a time management perspective.

I am also a terrible (but improving) cook. The planning skills are an easier place to start, you can add the cooking in gradually later. Start with a list - you probably have a couple things you know how to make, write them on the list first, then add in some things that you can pick up at the grocery store (frozen/boxed meals, or deli, etc). If you eat out frequently, think about what you normally order and whether there is a similar item at the grocery store for less. List everything you can think of, this will be your master list of ideas for meal planning.

Each week, select 7 meals off of your master list that you think you would like to have that week and assign them each to a day. Try to keep in mind the preparation time, and what else might be happening that evening - plan quick meals for busy evenings. Then make a shopping list that includes everything you need for those 7 meals - shop once for the week, stick to your list. (you can choose a different time frame, but I find a week most manageable)

Do this until it becomes a habit, do not worry about any other factor until the planning is automatic. Once you have the planning down, start adding in some of the following habits, one at a time:

• Plan some of the week's meals based on what you already have on hand
• Read the flyers and plan some meals around sales
• Look through coupon inserts for items you use
• Combine coupons with sales for increased savings
• Stock up on frequently used items while on sale
• Learn to make homemade versions of frequently purchased ready made meals
• Go through recipe books/websites and attempt a new dish on a regular basis
• Collect successful recipes in a book / make notes in recipes books of what you've tried and didn't like

The key is to just do anything in the beginning to simply avoid eating out, then gradually make eating in more cost efficient.

[Contrary Housewife]

We started by making a simple budget, showing how much was coming in and writing down all our known expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, credit card bills, car maintenance and medical. This told us how much (really, how little) "free" cash we had each month. Then I jumped on paying down the smaller bills.

Cooking: you don't have to put a 3 course gourmet dinner on the table every night right away. I'm sure you know how to fix something. Start with what you do know. I'm sure you can make sandwiches and open a can of soup. Make a salad from lettuce and some cut up tomato and cucumber. Put some hard boiled eggs on top, right? Make spaghetti with jarred tomato sauce? Toast with garlic spread?

As others suggest, look in the frozen food section of the grocery for dinner kits you can make at home. There's a lot of frozen lasagne and pot roast dinners there, some you add meat to, some you just heat up. Add a salad or some frozen vegetables and you have a meal. You can eventually learn to make these from scratch.

I learned how to cook by watching cooking shows on Sunday morning before going off to work. I would write the recipes down in a notebook (this was pre-internet, before cable tv cooking channels) and make them up later. I'm a visual learner and it really helped seeing someone demo it. There's so many resources online now, even cooking videos you can watch and learn from.

Chores: make husband and kids responsible for their own messes. They can put their clothes in the hamper, DH can run his own laundry. They can move their dishes to the sink or the dishwasher. Newspaper or soda bottles can be put in the trash or recycle, toys put in the closet or toybox. Even very young children can do these things.

Don't try to do the whole house or apartment at once. Pick one room for Saturday morning and give it a really good going over. Next week do a different room.

[monkeywrangler71]

I found that the easiest way to organize the household chores was to go through the entire house, one room at a time, and write down absolutely everything that ever needed to be done. Some things needed to be done frequently, some things only needed to be done once.

I then sat down with that list and began moving items on to a sort of schedule.

First, any tasks that needed to be done daily - dishes, tidy up - I assigned to either morning or evening.

Second, tasks that had to be done weekly (most of my cleaning, changing sheets) - or a couple times a week (bathrooms, vacuuming), I went through and assigned to a day of the week. I tried to group items that were in close proximity on the same day (ie. all the rooms in the same area cleaned at the same time), and tried to make the workload relatively equal each day. Because you work full-time, you will more likely end up doing most of these tasks on the weekend.

I had a few things that were a couple times a month or year. Because I work with an electronic schedule, I just put them in my calendar, set to repeat every how ever many weeks or months. This would be things like changing the filter on the furnace, or cleaning the laundry room. I have always found scheduling much easier with an electronic organizer, but if you were using paper, you would would need a full year calendar to add items like this, rather than just a weekly schedule.

All items that only had to be done once (painting, repairs, etc.) were added to a master project list. Those things were done during extra time (ha ha ha).

Once you have a good idea of what needs to be done each day to keep on top of the housework, you can start thinking about how to divide the tasks among family members. You may find it helpful to post the list of tasks for the day on the fridge, rather than keeping it in a notebook, if you are expecting help. This will help the other members of your family understand just how much work it takes to run the household, as many of these tasks tend to be invisible to the people who don't normally do them. If your children are small, you may need to break some tasks down and just assign them a part of them - for example, my 4 & 5 year old strip their bed and put their dirty sheets in the laundry, but I make up the bed with the fresh sheets.

[ladytoysdream]

Hi and welcome to the site.

You got a lot of great advice so far.

All I can add is....keep things simple.
Try different things, keep the ones you like and drop what you and family don't like.
Jot down new ideas in your notebook as you find them.

And just continue to tweak things as you go.
As the old saying goes....practice makes perfect

[MomToTwoBoys]

First off, welcome to the Village!

Second, my best piece of advice for you is to take it slow. It's a lot to absorb. I would pick one area that you want to change and do as much research as you can. Print out pages and put them into a binder to help as reference points for later. For example, if you want to do meal planning then I would look for websites on how to start and what to look for. Focus on getting all of your information first before modifying your meal plan.

It takes a lot of work to get even one aspect of frugality correct or best suited to your lifestyle, but it's worth it. So do things one step at a time.

[cheles2kids]

Sounds like you're trying to bite off everything at once. Slow down and figure out one thing at a time. Lifestyle change is not easy. Get one thing down then move on to another. Trying to change everything at once is just going to be worse for failure and backsliding.

This is what I was thinking after reading you're post as well...but I also remember when I first read about stockpiling and wanting to dive in head first~lol
I sooo love you're enthusiam to learn as much as you can!

But I agree with Mek42, I would try to stop & take a step back and make a list of the things that you would like to learn more about.

Then prioritize that list...I would do this by looking at the things/routines that you would use the most in you're day to day life~
Menu planning would work to save you alot of money, instead of focusing so much on say, couponing, at first. (example)

After prioritizing, I would break this list down into say I dunno...a monthly schedule.
Say you want to work on menu planning and continue working on you're household notebook for the month of July~ (remember, these are just examples, use whatever is most important to you & you're family)

Start out with working through a weekly menu and continue adding items that you feel are important to you're household notebook.

Then once you reach August...work on making a 2 week menu while still continuing to work on you're household notebook but then pick up another area of interest as well, such as cooking more in you're crockpot.

I've found if I make lists & set personal goals for myself, either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly I am more apt to keep myself motivated and I don't feel so overwhelmed with everything all at once.

I try to look at running a household as a full-time job, which it is, but working outside the home for someone else, you would have daily repsonsibilites to someone other than yourself.

Then, depending on where you work, you might also have weekly or monthly goals you need/want to achieve in order to keep said job, or even to keep 'production' costs down and after awhile you might get a bonus or raise for working so diligently.

Same benefits apply in you're home, except you're "bonus/raise" might be an extra $100.00 a month that you can add to pay down a monthly bill or more quality time with you're family because you're able to sit down together 4 nights a week at dinner time, instead of only 1.

Oh & after rambling for so long...I'd also like to add~please don't get discouraged.
If you try something new that you've heard/read about and it just doesn't 'work' for you or you're family, then drop it.
Not everything you learn about will save you money/time...as with everything else, just because it works for one person doesn't mean it will work for everyone.