The pandemic led to more people cooking at home instead of eating out at restaurants for safety reasons.  Now that the pandemic has receded into the background many companies have begun mandating that employees return to work.  With the return to work, employees will not have less time on their hands to cook the food that the want when they want it.

One way that consumers can still have their food and cook it too is by meal prepping.  There are different routes that you can take to meal prepping and there are no steadfast rules.  Some people like to cook one large meal and divide the meal by the number of days they plan to eat that dish.  Other people may season their meats ahead of time with a plan to cook it a different way each day.  While you may be cooking each day the time spent cooking can be cut down since your main dish is already seasoned and there will be less dishes needing to be cleaned since all the prep work is down ahead of time.

If you’re a fast cook then simply preparing the meats ahead of time may be the route that you want to take. This way you can ensure that you cook the exact portions that you want to eat and you’re guaranteed a fresh meal every day.  You may also choose to prep all of your fresh seasonings that you want to use in your meals.  If  you’re a basic cook then preparing the meal you cook best may be the way to go and then dividing that meal that you only need to warm up when you’re ready to eat.

How Does Meal Prep Save You Money?

1. Reduces dining out: When you have pre-prepared meals ready to go, you’re less likely to eat out or order takeout, which can be more expensive compared to cooking at home. By avoiding frequent restaurant meals, you save money on the higher prices associated with dining out.
2. Buying in bulk: Meal prepping often involves purchasing ingredients in larger quantities, which can be more cost-effective. Buying in bulk allows you to take advantage of discounts and deals offered on larger packages or at wholesale stores. This way, you can save money per unit or per serving of food.
3. Minimizes food waste: Meal prepping allows you to plan your meals and portion them accordingly. This reduces the chances of food going bad or being wasted because you can utilize ingredients more efficiently. With less food waste, you save money by making the most out of the groceries you purchase.
4. Takes advantage of sales and seasonal produce: When you plan your meals in advance, you can keep an eye on sales and discounts at your local grocery stores. By incorporating these discounted items into your meal prep, you can save money on groceries. Additionally, buying seasonal produce is often cheaper, and you can plan your meals around these ingredients, further reducing costs.
5. Efficient use of leftovers: Meal prepping often involves cooking larger batches of food, which means you’ll have leftovers. These leftovers can be repurposed into new meals, reducing the need to buy additional ingredients. Transforming leftovers into new dishes or incorporating them into different recipes helps save money and prevents food waste.
6. Avoids impulse purchases: By having a plan and pre-prepared meals, you can avoid spontaneous trips to the grocery store where you might be tempted to buy items you don’t need. Having a list of ingredients and sticking to it reduces impulse purchases and saves money by keeping you focused on what you actually need.

What are some of the benefits of meal prepping?

1.       Time-saving: Meal prep allows you to streamline your cooking process by preparing multiple meals at once. This means you spend less time in the kitchen during busy weekdays  and have more free time to relax or pursue other activities.
2.      Money-saving: When you plan your meals in advance, you can make a shopping list and buy ingredients in bulk, reducing food waste and saving money in the long run.           Additionally, by avoiding last-minute takeout or restaurant meals, you can cut down on unnecessary expenses.
3.     Health and portion control: Meal prep enables you to have better control over the ingredients you use and portion sizes, leading to healthier and balanced meals. You can     incorporate a variety of nutrient-rich foods, control added sugars and unhealthy fats, and customize meals to fit specific dietary needs or preferences.
4.    Stress reduction: With pre-prepared meals waiting in the fridge, you eliminate the daily question of “What’s for dinner?” and the stress associated with last-minute meal decisions.       Meal prep brings a sense of structure and organization to your eating routine, reducing decision fatigue.

How To Get Started With Meal Prepping

1. Planning your meals: Begin by deciding how many meals you want to prepare in advance and which days of the week you’ll be using them. Consider your schedule, dietary goals, and the number of people you’re cooking for. Start with simple recipes and gradually expand your repertoire.
2. Developing a grocery list: Based on your planned meals, create a comprehensive shopping list. Include fresh produce, proteins, grains, and pantry staples. Stick to your list to avoid impulsive purchases and unnecessary expenses.
3. Efficient cooking techniques: Optimize your time by multitasking in the kitchen. Simultaneously roast vegetables, cook grains, and marinate proteins. Utilize appliances like slow cookers or pressure cookers to save time and effort.
4. Proper storage: Invest in high-quality meal prep containers that are freezer and microwave-safe. Portion out your meals and label them with dates for easy tracking. Consider investing in compartmentalized containers for convenient separation of different components.

How Meal Prepping Saves You Time

1. Efficient Grocery Shopping (Word count: 140) One of the primary time-saving benefits of meal prep is streamlined grocery shopping. By planning your meals in advance, you can create a detailed shopping list, ensuring you purchase only the necessary ingredients. This eliminates impulsive purchases and time wasted wandering through supermarket aisles. Additionally, shopping once a week or less saves multiple trips to the store, freeing up valuable time for other activities.
2. Quick and Easy Meal Preparation (Word count: 160) Meal prep involves dedicating a specific time, usually once or twice a week, to prepare meals for the upcoming days. During this focused session, you can chop vegetables, marinate meats, and cook grains in bulk. By preparing multiple servings at once, you minimize the need for repetitive meal prep tasks throughout the week. Simply reheat or assemble pre-prepared components, and your meals are ready to enjoy.
3. Reduced Cleanup Time (Word count: 120) Preparing meals in bulk significantly reduces the number of dishes and utensils used throughout the week. Instead of washing pots, pans, and cutting boards every day, you can tackle them all at once during your meal prep session. This consolidation of cleanup time can be a substantial time-saver, leaving you with fewer chores and more time to relax or pursue other interests.
4. Streamlined Decision-Making (Word count: 140) Have you ever spent an excessive amount of time pondering what to eat for each meal? Meal prep eliminates this decision fatigue by providing you with pre-determined meals for the week. By planning your menu in advance, you eliminate the need to think about what to cook, thus saving time and mental energy. Additionally, knowing that healthy and delicious meals are readily available reduces the temptation to resort to unhealthy fast food options.
5. Increased Productivity (Word count: 160) With meal prep, you can say goodbye to the daily distractions and interruptions caused by meal preparation. By allocating a dedicated time slot for cooking and packing meals, you can optimize your productivity throughout the week. Whether it’s focusing on work, completing household tasks, or pursuing hobbies, meal prep allows you to allocate your time more efficiently.

Meal prepping is a great way to ensure that you know where all of the food you eat comes from, that the food is nutrient dense and healthy and not full of sodium.  It can take some time and effort at the beginning but eventually you start to get the hang of it and it’s easy to prepare all of your meals in advance.

1. Lose the cable or satellite television service. Even if you have cut your paid television service down to the bare minimum, these services are still expensive and unnecessary in today’s world. If you have Internet service, you can watch television shows from the major networks online free. You can also sign up for less expensive services online, such as NetFlix or Hulu. Another option is to purchase an antenna to pick up digital broadcast stations within a radius of 50 miles or more. By ditching these paid services, you can easily cut your monthly budget by $100 or more.

2. Turn the home phone service off. If you have a cellphone, you do not need a home phone. This is just an extra bill that will bleed you dry, especially if you have to pay for long distance. However, if you need your home phone for another reason, such as the ability to connect to the internet, call your telephone service provider and cut down on the extra features you are paying for, such as call waiting, caller ID, and call forwarding.

3. Reduce your grocery bill. There are many options for lowering your grocery bill. You can shop at big box stores to buy in bulk, which reduces the overall cost. You can purchase off-brand products instead of brand name products. You can make use of coupons and double coupon days at your local grocery stores. You can watch sales papers and stock up on sale items. Many grocery retailers are now offering online services, which allow you to shop online, then either pick up your order at the store, or have the order delivered. If you use one of these services, you can save a great deal of money because impulse buying will no longer be an issue. On the other hand, if you have the order delivered, there may be delivery fees that will cancel out any savings you may have realized.

4. Sign up for average billing on your utilities. Most utility companies offer average billing, although they may refer to it by another name, such as levelized billing. This does not actually save you any money, but it will make it easier to pay your monthly bill, and it will also make it easier to budget these expenses since you will know how much your bill will be each month moving forward. You will not have to worry about higher electrical bills during the summer or higher heating bills in the winter.

5. Reduce the cost of your home. Regardless of whether you rent your home, or you are purchasing your home, you can reduce the amount you are paying each month. If you are a renter, you will probably have to move to reduce your rent payments. In some cases, you may be able to exchange work for a reduction in the rent, such as taking over the lawn maintenance or making repairs to the home. If you are buying your home, you should check into refinancing the home, which will give you the option of finding a lower interest rate. If you have already paid down the principle of the home, you should be able to get a lower monthly payment.

There are numerous other ways you can reduce your monthly expenses. Take a long, hard look at your budget, and be realistic about the expenses you can reduce. When you are looking at that budget, remember that survival only requires basic things, which include air, water, food, and shelter. Everything else is icing on the cake.

The Heavy Weight of Childcare. Often when two parents are working outside of the home, the price tag of full-time childcare can rival the mortgage payment on an average-sized house. And once the kids reach school age, after-school childcare is typically not as much of a break in costs as one might think. When even one of the parents’ schedules is re-arranged to allow for time to work from home, a family can usually make alternate and far less costly childcare arrangements.

Working from home does not necessarily equate to being a stay-at-home parent, so removing the cost of childcare completely from your monthly expenses may not be feasible. However, there are a large number of far less expensive part-time options, such as a Mother’s Day Out program at a local church or a neighbor who cares for a small number of children in her home. Think about structuring the care around the times when your children would normally be napping or having a quiet rest time in the afternoons, a time when you would be able to work with the children in the house anyway.

Give The Gas Guzzler A Break. The length of a typical commute can vary in different parts of the country. However, when you get in your car and drive even 10 to 15 miles to work, and then make the return trip home again in the evening, you are likely eating up close to a full tank of gas a week. If you have a longer commute, run errands at work, or have a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle, you may be filling up your tank two or possibly even three times a week. There’s no doubt about it – your commute is a huge drain on your financial resources.

When you can work from home, you may find yourself more typically getting in your only a few times a week to run errands that are just a short distance away. So rather than filling up once or twice a week, when you work from home, you likely will see that drop to filling up every two or three weeks. You will also have to perform regular maintenance on your car far less often as your mileage decreases.

The Lure Of Eating Out. You may have great intentions of brown-bagging-it to work every day, but once you hit the office you are likely to be enticed away from last night’s leftovers by co-workers who invite you to lunch. Or maybe you’ve had a bad morning at the office and need to take a lunch break for the sake of your sanity. When you work at home, these hidden enticements are simply  not there. You are more likely to power through lunch at your home computer, or to take a break and watch some TV while you eat.

The lure of eating out continues on your way home from work. Everything from a long day at the office and insufficient sleep the night before to a busy evening with the kids’ extracurricular activities can cause you to stop and pick up something fast to eat for dinner. When you work from home, it’s much easier to plan and prepare a meal at home. You can pop something in the crock pot on your lunch break, or maybe through a casserole or cutlets in the oven, then go back to work at your home office while your meal cooks.

Getting More Done. When you don’t have a lengthy commute, you will have more time to devote to working. Rather than starting work at 9am, you may be ready to hop on the computer at 8am instead. You also don’t need to worry about packing a lunch to take to work, ironing your clothes, or stopping on the way to work to fill up the gas tank.

You also won’t have the constant disruption of working in an office environment with chatty co-workers. You will find that you are a much more efficient worker at home. What once took you an  hour to complete in the office may only take you thirty minutes to complete at home. If you work by the hour or get paid on commission, you should expect that the additional time you can now spend working each day provides you the opportunity to make more money.

Working from home can provide you with a far less stressful and more relaxed work environment, as well as the opportunity to save a tremendous amount of money on work-related expenses.