Prepping for Meals Ahead of Time

This hint goes along with the last one. Anything you can do to save time later is always worth it. It makes fixing dinner after a full day of work or a full day of taking care of kids much easier.

I try to prep as much as I can the night before when it is appropriate. This is especially helpful if I need to put something in the crockpot in the morning. I know I will not have time to do all the cutting, chopping, and measuring that is probably needed for the recipe. 

If your recipe calls for chopped vegetables, go ahead and chop them the night before and put them in a container or in a bag in the fridge. Then you will have that ready for the next evening. If you need several spices that get placed in your dish all at the same time, go ahead and measure them out into a bowl with a lid or some other containment unit. Then you just dump them out when it is time. I know there are some out there that even meal prep on the weekend for their meals for the week. If that works for you, give it a try. As long as it is something that won’t spoil before you are ready to use it, I say go for it!

You can also set out utensils, small appliances, cookware, etc the night before, if it’s appropriate, or even the morning of. Then when you get home or when it is time to prepare dinner, you have everything ready to go.

Obviously you can’t always do this or it is not appropriate to do, but it really does help with your time management the following day. It also helps you make sure that you do have all the needed ingredients. Sometimes something will get by me that I should have added to my grocery list but I didn’t. This gives me a chance to get what I need sometime during that day. You definitely don’t want to get ready to start cooking and you don’t have everything you need.

Of course, prepping like this requires you to do some planning. That is where your weekly list of daily to-do items is very handy. You can place these reminders on that list, whether it’s electronic or old-school paper like mine, so that you will make sure to take care of them at the appropriate time. Managing your mundane so that you have time for other things you want to do can be done. You just have to organize yourself a little bit. You can do it!