Zero Waste, Frugal Living, & Bullet Journal

I know that Zero Waste, Frugal Living, & Bullet Journals may not sound like they go together but let me see if I can explain. 

Although a bullet journal is not zero waste, once you use all the pages you can't reuse them, and probably can't re-purpose them, you probably can recycle them if you break them up. And if we are honest we most likely won't refer back to them. But I know being organised will help me reduce waste and save money. 

In my house the biggest expense after rent is food, we love our food, but the heart breaking truth is that more food than I like gets thrown away. I go to the shop and impulse buy things with half an idea of a meal I will make with it but I don't have a meal plan and by the end of its life I still haven't managed to use it.

A perfect example is pineapple, I really like pineapple, fresh even more so. So when I see one on offer at the super market I think to my self, if I get it I can cut it up, portion it into boxes and have it for my lunches. Inevitably I get home, get the shopping away and go relax, telling my self I will chop it up later, but I forget, it gets lost in the fridge and goes bad. My most successful fruit is apples, because I can just grab it and go. 

My unplanned buys are not just limited to fruit, I do it with so many foods, and this is where my bullet journal should help. 

I have been trying to meal plan for a long time with mixed levels of success, mostly because I am so inconsistent with my planning and that migraines leave me so drained that I just don't feel able to cook. Which is when we buy takeaway or something microwaveable from the shop round the corner. All of which cost money, more so than me cooking normally, and generates more waste. 

This year my household has had a drop in income and we are now bracing for another in the new year. Our new budget will be much lower than we are used to so I need to save money where ever I can. Meal planning, careful shopping, and a stash of easy ready to go meals will go from nice to necessary.

I know you are thinking I could meal plan and make shopping lists using an app on my phone, and that is a great option, but for me paper is better, its just how I work. 

So what will I need in my journal to manage my spending and waste: 

A year planned is essential, its a space to write down any and all events for the coming year. If there is a birthday or one of us will be away this will change the meal plan. I can also record dates my parents will be busy as I usually shop with them. Often we want to remember something up coming that is beyond the current month or week so all these can be added too. 

Last time I made a meal plan cheat sheet, it seemed like a great idea when I made it, but I find I very rarely look at it. I have a box of recipe cards that I flick through to pick meals, they have the advantage of having the ingredients listed that I can add them to a shopping list. I can also take the cards to the kitchen so they are ready when its time to cook. 

I am in two minds when it comes to my master shopping list, I didn't use it much, but I know it could be very useful, for example if I know I won't get to a certain shop next week I can check things I get from there to see if I can stock up now.

I made a recipe log, where I planned to write down any recipes I wanted to try, but a year (ish) later and its still blank. No point in that page. 

Mostly I use weeklies to plan, I create monthlies but don't tend to use them much. For my new journal I will focus on my weeklies, maybe drawing them up in month long batches, but a separate month page feels unnecessary. With more than one week drawn up I can add meals to later weeks when I think of them.

For a while I added a shopping list to my weeklies but soon found it inconvenient carrying my open journal around the shop. Lately I have been using a note app on my phone with sections for different shops, I think I will rearrange the heading into types as sometimes its hard checking off items that are unsorted. 

Ok, planner is on order, and I have a good idea of what I want in it to help me.

Outside the planner but still paper I will continue to write up any recipes we try and enjoy. Building a library of cost effective recipes is essential to the plan of reducing costs and waste.