Feeding your family healthy meals without breaking the bank, and without slaving in the kitchen all day seems nearly impossible most days!

With three busy kids and a demanding job I was struggling to find the time to shop for groceries and cook healthy meals for my family. But I finally decided to try a new approach, and it worked! And I can’t wait to share it with you so you can save money and time in the kitchen too!

In this post I’ll share the exact strategies I use to save money and time in the kitchen. I cover:

·       How I finally got organized and learned how to save time and money on my family’s meals

·       How to meal plan for two days at a time

·       How I use Instacart to save money and time. Yes, I said SAVE MONEY with Instacart

·       How I save time on food prep with my Ninja Express Chopper

·       How I use my Instant Pot to make quick, easy, delicious meals, EVEN on busy weeknights

So, if you are tired of spending hundreds of dollars on groceries that go to waste every week, and your tired of spending hours in the kitchen after a long day at work, then you are in the right place! It’s all about to change…

How I finally got organized and learned how to save time and money on my family’s meals

Starting about a year ago, I felt like I was in a constant state of chaos every day. I was rushing around from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed. I was desperate to get some order in my life, so I took a time management course. Part of that course was to write down what you spend your time doing for a whole week and what you spend money on for a whole week. Just tracking it all with no judgement. What I found was that surprisingly I was spending on average over 2 hours every day on grocery shopping, cooking meals and cleaning up after meals. 2 hours! That’s 14 hours per week! AND I spent $345.00 on groceries that week. I was shocked, not so much by the groceries. I knew our groceries were over the top, but 14 hours every week? Now, I do work at home as does my husband, so I do make three meals a day at home, and that creates a lot of dishes to take care of, but still, 2 hours a day was shocking to me.

I went on a mission to find a better way. I had to get some of that time back. There had to be an easier, faster, less expensive way to prepare healthy meals for myself and my family. I had to be missing something. I researched quick and easy meals; how to save time in the kitchen; meal planning; and I read every blog post on how to save money on groceries. I learned some things in that research that made sense, but they weren’t really saving me any time or any money.

Then about six months ago, I decided to try the things I learned but to try it in a smaller capacity. I planned for only 2 days at a time… and IT WORKED. It was so simple, but everything I learned in those courses was to tackle a week at a time, some even covered monthly planning. I couldn’t believe the difference with just this one small change. In just a few weeks I was down to an average of 1 hour a day on grocery shopping and cooking meals and that number has been decreasing ever since. And with this approach I was spending almost half of what I did before on groceries. HALF!

I felt great. I felt confident and organized. I was spending less time in the kitchen which meant that I had extra time to start tackling to-do’s that had been on my list for months.

This approach has completely changed my life and I’m so excited to share it with you. I am going to outline exactly what I did and teach you step by step how to do it for your family too. Let’s get you organized, spending less time in the kitchen AND saving money on groceries! And we are going to do it all while still preparing awesome healthy meals for your family.

Strategy One: 2 Day Meal Planning… ONLY 2 DAYS

This strategy is the most significant money saver on the list, but it is also a huge time saver. The 2 Day Meal Plan is what gets you organized to execute the rest of the steps. This is so important. It is a must, but it is also a must that you should ONLY MEAL PLAN FOR TWO DAYS AT A TIME.

There are Two Very Important Keys to Meal Planning:

Meal Planning Key #1: Plan for only two days at a time

The problem I have with traditional meal planning is that it is all structured around 7 days at a time. Planning for a whole week does NOT work for me and I bet it doesn’t work for you either. First, I can’t think that far ahead, and second, a week is too much to commit to. Alot can change from the beginning of a week to the end. You could get sick and not be up to cooking or you could have an unexpected event happen that changes your plans. And food for a whole 7 days is just too much to have in the fridge. It’s overwhelming to open a fridge to seven days’ worth of food. Plus, everyone will complain that there is no food because they can’t find it! All after you just spent $350.00 on groceries. Planning for two days at a time is the key to my strategy. It will keep you on track to shop for only what you need, and it will keep you on track to cook what you have planned. Shopping for 20 items that you need for 2 days is a lot faster and easier than shopping for 100 items to cover an entire week. And when you look in the fridge, you won’t be overwhelmed with choices. You’ll look at your planner and get started on dinner.

Bonus: I usually find that day 3 is covered from leftovers from days 1 and 2 also, so that’s a money saving bonus and a day off of cooking and planning too.

Meal Planning Key #2: You must factor in what you have going on for the days that you are planning.

I make a calendar that has all of our activities and obligations on it and then I start the plan. If you know that your son Jimmy has a 4-hour golf game tomorrow that you plan to watch that starts at 6:00, then you cannot plan to make a big 4 course sit down dinner tomorrow. You will have to plan a fast, easy instant pot meal like my instant pot chicken tortilla soup that you can put in right when the kids get home from school. This is very important if you want meal planning to work for you. You must realistically define how much time you have available to prepare a meal for each night.

To save time in the chicken you can also make extra every time you make a meal. This is especially easy if you have a 10 Quart Instant Pot or a 12 Quart Instant Pot. You can make a double batch of a meal and use the left overs for lunch another day or put it in the freezer and just heat it back up in your instant pot at another time for a quick and easy dinner.

For more information on 2 Day Meal Planning, check out my post on Meal Planning 2 Days at a Time and print out one of our free meal planners to get started with. You can print them double sided and have day 1 on one side and day 2 on the other side. They include a place to put your calendar activities, your meal plan and your grocery list to stay organized.

Strategy Two: How I use Instacart to save money and time shopping for the meals I planned

Yes, Instacart is a paid service, and you are probably wondering how you can possibly save money using a paid service? I could go on for days about this, but I’m going to give you the condensed version here and if you want to read all the nitty gritty details then head over to my blog post on “using Instacart to save money on groceries”. There is a lot of information in that post about how to utilize the app to save money on your order. It also covers the calculation of how I used to spend 231.00 per week on groceries and now I spend on average 103.00 per week.

The short story is that you are going to save money because:

·       you are organized (from your meal plan in step 1)

·       You are only going to purchase what you need to get through the next two days.

·       You will not be in a hurry shopping so you can price shop each item to find the best price.

·       You will not be at the physical store, so you will stick to your list.

·       You will not have the kids or your hubs with you putting items in your cart 😊

·       There will be no waste because you will only purchase what you plan to cook for the next two days. Nothing will go bad waiting to be cooked

·       You won’t shop again until you know you need additional items or until you are planning your next two-day slot.

You will save time because:

·       you will not be driving to the store and back

·       you will not be shopping for your own groceries. You have outsourced that to your shopper for a fee, but the fee is much less than your time is worth, and you are happy to get that time back in your day.

·       you have a plan for what you are going to cook, and you have already chosen meals that fit into your schedule.

·       You will use our premade Instacart lists for recipes you love from our blog so there is no searching for each item individually on Instacart, just click what you need from the list and add it to your cart.

I go more into depth on each step of this strategy in my blog post Saving money on groceries with Instacart.

It’s important to point out here that I am shopping for 6 people. My family of 5 and my Dad who eats with us several times a week. If you are only shopping for two people, your savings will be less than the $100.00 per week that I was able to save. I also have a yearly subscription to Instacart so for small yearly fee I get free Instacart delivery on orders over 35.00. Think kind of like Amazon Prime. If you are not a member, then delivery fees start at 3.99. Still a bargain in my eyes. I would spend that on gas to get to and from the store.

Strategy Three: Using the Ninja Express Chopper (or a similar chopper/food processor)

This strategy is solely for time saving. If you are still cutting your veggies by hand then you really need to consider the Ninja Express Chopper. I had this ninja for maybe 10 years before I really figured out what to use it for. I wasn’t really using anything to help prepare meals. I think maybe I thought it would be hard to clean, but the model I have, which is the ninja express chopper is NOT hard to clean. You have a bowl that you place the blade in. Then you add the veggies and place the splash guard on top (this keeps the top clean). Then you place the top on, which is the part with the electronics. All the parts that get dirty can go in the dishwasher. The top can’t, but I just rinse that right after I use it and let it air dry. If you use the splash guard, you may don’t even need to rinse. There are many more advanced (and more expensive) models which I plan to try soon, but this model costs less than 20.00 and it does the trick for me. I will write about those models once I try them, but for the sake of saving time prepping meals, the ninja express chopper is THE BEST.

I start almost every instant pot meal with garlic and onions sautéing in the pot. I take the skin off the garlic and onion and cut the onion into quarters and into the ninja it goes. I pulse it between ten to twenty times until I get it to the consistency I want, and in the pot it goes. Dicing onions by hand and squeezing your garlic through the garlic press easily take you 5 to 10 minutes depending on your cutting skills, and that isn’t counting the clean up of those tricky garlic presses. So, strategy number three covers easier prep work in the kitchen and easy breezy clean up.

Strategy Four and the most important for time saving… The Instant Pot!

This strategy is also solely for time saving. The instant pot is by far my favorite kitchen appliance. I use it every day. Sometimes more than one time a day. I use it for hard boiled eggs, chilis, soups, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, any potatoes really, even au gratin gets started in the instant pot. I make my own chicken, beef and vegetable stocks (another money saver!), goulash, rice dishes, pasta dishes, you name it! I have not mastered dessert in the instant pot or dishes containing dough in there yet, but there are plenty of recipes out there for those as well. The instant pot itself, with no other strategies involved saves me at least 30 minutes EVERY day on dinner alone. On weekends when I do a lot of cooking for the upcoming week it saves me a few hours in the kitchen. You can cook hard boiled eggs in 6 minutes; goulash and pasta dishes in 10 minutes; soups in under 30 minutes; the most tender shredded meat in under 40 minutes; chicken, turkey or beef stock in under an hour. The list goes on. And, cleaning it is simple too. It’s only one pot. My instant pot came with a stainless-steel pot. If anything gets stuck on you can use a brillo pad to easily get it off. You can buy an extra inner pot for your Instant pot too. The carry stainless steel and nonstick varieties for the extra pots. You can also buy a glass instant pot lid so after you make something you can put the lid on it and store it in the fridge right in the pot. They also carry silicone instant pot lids as well.

For more great accessories for the instant pot see my post titled “The best Instant Pot Accessories”.

I have so many friends tell me they hate the instant pot, and they can’t figure out how to use it. So many people have said this to me that I wrote a whole post on why the instant pot is the best kitchen appliance ever invented.

You will find lots of examples of what cooks faster and better in the instant pot in that post.

For all the best time saving instant pot recipes see “Fast Easy Instant Pot Recipes”

Once I implemented these strategies consistently, it changed everything for me. I feel organized and less stressed out when it’s dinner time. With the money we save on groceries, we cook a special fancy meal once a month on

the weekend to celebrate. Steak and Crab Legs is on the agenda for November.

Are you ready to get organized AND save money AND save time every day?

Follow the steps I outline below, and you will be on your way to feeling organized, saving time and saving money.

Here is what you need to get started:

Step 1: Make a meal plan for the next 2 days

Not sure how? Start by printing either one of our blank meal planners or a Sample Meal planner.

The blank meal planner is a template that you can use to plan your two days. You fill in your own recipes on this planner.

The Sample Meal planner is a prepopulated meal plan that I have made for you. You can download and/or print it. It is a meal planner with two days of meal planning filled in as well as the grocery list filled in for you.  You can use this as an example of how it will work and make your own plan on a separate blank printed planner or use the prepopulated one to get the hang of the process.

I don’t fill in snacks in the sample plan because everyone is so different on what they snack on. I do put breakfast into my complete meal plans, but if you don’t eat a full breakfast and eat on the go, you can remove these grocery items from your list.

 Step 2: Order all the ingredients you need from Instacart

After completing your meal plan and getting your grocery list ready, head over to the Instacart app or web page and enter all of your groceries. If you are using recipes from our blog, there is an Instacart list included with each recipe. Just click on the grocery list link from the recipe (between the ingredients and the instructions) and add all of the items in the list to your cart.

If you are using my complete 2-day meal plan from step one, then you can use this pre-made Instacart list. Clicking on the link will take you to Instacart where you can add the list items to your cart and check out.

Step 3: Order a ninja express chopper if you don’t already have one

The Ninja Express Chopper is less than 20.00 and it will save you  SO MUCH time on food prep.

Step 4: Order an Instant Pot if you don’t already have one.

You need an instant Pot in your life if you do not have one! This is the biggest time saver on the list!!

I use the 8-quart instant pot model but there is also a 6 quart instant pot and a 10-quart instant pot model.

Step 5: Follow Sage & Sesame on Pinterest

Keep all your recipes in one place and get all our new recipes and blog posts to your Pinterest feed!

Step 6: Enjoy the extra time you have today because your meals are already planned out!

Still not convinced the strategies above can save you time and money? Still can’t figure out how to use that darn instant pot? Don’t think you can actually save money on groceries and be organized in the kitchen? Get instant access to my Two-Day Meal Planning eBook. It will teach you everything you need to know to save money and time planning your family’s meals two days at a time. I will teach you how to get organized once and for all and how to save money and time in the process. Use the form below to get instant access to this life changing eBook today!

Use some of our favorite low cost recipes in your meal plan:

Chicken Tortilla Soup Instant Pot

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