There is something very basic that all of us do every day, this nourishes us, and it is one of the basic needs of any living being. But this is also one of the most time and energy consuming tasks for us. I am talking about the question we ask at least 3 times in a day “What to cook/eat??”. Even before we start a day, the night before this question pops into our head. What should I prepare tomorrow for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In case you have kids, there is an additional confusion about what to prepare for their school snacks.
The task of cooking and eating itself does not consume so much time as the time we take to answer this question. Thinking about what food to eat takes away lot of our energy, and even if we finally decide what it is that we want to eat – we find that we don’t have the necessary ingredient in our house. I am sure most could relate to this.
But why am I talking about what to cook in a personal finance blog? Well, there have been instances (especially on weekends), where the inability to decide on what to cook has resulted in ordering random food from outside, which of course is unhealthy and expensive compared to a home-cooked meal. And if this repeats daily, we will end up spending more on eating out and end up unhealthy.
I used to be like this – I never planned my meals and always make an end of the moment decision right before the mealtime. But when I had a child this way of preparing and eating food did not work for me. It is a huge task to plan meals for a young child. As kids still haven’t developed the digestive system to eat whatever is given. That is when I decided to change my way.
I am always finding ways to make better use of time. So, I did not want to spend 30 mins (or even more sometimes) thinking about what to eat. I looked for solutions to solve this problem. The solution was very simple – I downloaded a meal planning app. Nothing fancy, just a basic free version from the app store. But the amount of time and money this small change has saved is huge.
Now I spend 15 minutes on a Sunday night planning what food to prepare during the coming week. This reduces the mental load during weekdays, and I can also purchase the weekly groceries based on this. I no longer do impulse buys in the store assuming I will need that in the coming week. Even ordering out has reduced significantly, I am now able to stick to my monthly plan of just eating one meal out a week. Sometimes the solution is simple. We don’t need to purchase a meal planner board or take subscription for a meal tracker app – even a basic free app will do. We thrive when there is a routine, and our mind absolutely hates uncertainty. So, why do we put ourselves in that situation for something as simple as eating. Start planning your meals and start noticing the free time and money from this single decision.
