Inventory and Meal Planning

As many of you know, I read the Dave Ramsey forums as often as I can.  I try to follow his way of paying off bills and saving for college, paying off the house and being debt free (Baby Steps 1-7). 

Anyway, in the forums, they say in order to save some money on grocery shopping, you should do a pantry/freezer inventory.  See what you have and what you can use and meal plan so as not to spend as much at the grocery store.  I took up the challenge for one month (at least).  I did this because our grocery bills are sort of out of control.  With five people in the house (three of them being men) and myself eating only organic foods and a very fussy daughter, I have been watching the grocery bill climb higher and higher each week/month.  (Please realize that hubby does most of the shopping and he tends to bulk shop and accumulate things and then he forgets what he bought - however I do appreciate the fact that he does the shopping!). 

I made the inventory last night!  It took quite a while. (five notebook pages) You honestly don't know what you have until you write it all down.  I have an upstairs freezer, a downstairs freezer, a cold room, a closet in the cold room for health and beauty aides and then cupboards in the kitchen full of food.  And I didn't even inventory the refrigerator. 

How many of you have 20 lbs. of all different types of pasta?  I do!  How many of you have seven boxes of unopened cold cereal, three boxes of opened cold cereal, two boxes of hot oatmeal cereal and three canisters of regular oatmeal?  I do!  Needless to say, we don't need pasta and cereal for quite some time!! :)  (I would be embarassed if I told you how much of other things I have....Think coffee) OMG!

So, the next part of this procedure is to meal plan using what I have in stock (by the way, 7 quarts of chicken stock and 1 beef stock frozen).  I have the meal plan for this whole week all set. 

I think we can get away with buying just milk, fruit, some veggies for salad, dish detergent and some cheese this week.  We do NOT need meat! 

I'm hoping to use everything I have in the house by the end of the year.  And then we can restock fresh beef (another 1/6th of a cow) and more chickens in January.  Then we will also re-stock the cold room and pantry shelves.

Wish me luck!