Frugal and the art of planning

Posted on May 6 · Comments

Of course, if I’d planned ahead and had been more organised, I wouldn’t have been standing in my underwear, grating soap at six o’clock in the morning. And if I had read my menu plan stuck right there on the fridge I would have remembered to defrost the mince this morning and we wouldn’t be eating Dominos.

So many aspects of being frugal require planning ahead and being organised.

Take shopping for example. Finding the best bargains means knowing what you need in advance before it runs out and waiting / shopping around for the best price.

Budgeting involves planning for future expenses and setting aside funds now to cover bills in the future.

Cooking from scratch, growing your own vegetables, frugal entertainment and making your own clothes and household goods all require a little forethought.

Unlike just going out and buying stuff.

There are a million tips on how to get organised. I’m a fan of the to do list. And the calendar, and a schedule. I would be lost without my Sunbird and excel. This, for example, is my excel planner for this blog:

I’m currently working out a household planner in excel for things like cleaning tasks and regular household maintenance. This will, I hope, slot into the organisation systems that we already have in place and hopefully also make things easier. When it comes to planning and organisation, there are a few steps for success.

The first step of planning is taking the time out to do it. This seems obvious, but it’s the step that we often skip over. You need to plan to plan.

The second is to pick planning tools that work for you and use them every day. I have bought diaries in the past and they haven’t been opened after February. However, I always use a calendar (actually, I’ve got three going) because I like to visually see what things are coming up and in how long. As well as the usual things like appointments, use your calendar to schedule things like maintenance and other irregular activities like cleaning out the gutters.

Thirdly, brain dump everything you can. Trying to remember everything is cause for stress and things being forgotten. A daily to do list is a good place to jot things down. A list is also a good motivator. I usually organise my daily list into things that need doing for this website, things that need doing at home, ‘personal’ items including down time and to do’s that reflect my goals for the year.

Other useful things to write down might be a gardening diary or planner, a housework planner, a career journal, a family favourites meal list, a pantry master list, household maintenance schedule, study schedule, class schedule, exercise diary, eating plan, and appointments.

On your to do list, highlight one or two most important tasks (MITs) and do these first, that way if you only get those things done, then you’ve had a successful day. After stressing about not getting things done, I had the revelation to put ‘play with baby’ on my daily to do list and highlight it as a MIT. If that’s all I get done then everyday’s a successful day. Grating soap has yet to make the MITs .

Don’t forget to plan for the unexpected. Financially, this means having an emergency fund. But it could also mean having a few craft activities hidden away for a rainy school holiday, or a well stocked pantry for creative cooking.

And lastly, all the planning in the world is useless if we don’t do what we plan to. Once we’ve written out our lists and filled out our calendar, it’s time to get to work. Having said that, planning is a tool to help make life easier and to help achieve goals, it isn’t supposed to be something that makes you feel like a failure if you don’t get done what you expect to. So today I’ll focus on my MITs and leave grating soap to another day.

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Category: household, motivation · Tags: household