Streamlining our lives with freezer meals

Why is it that no matter how hard we work we never seem to get it all done? There is always *something* that needs to be done in our house. Between the school work, laundry, cleaning, cooking, trips, projects, etc...there are just not enough hours in the day.

In an effort to streamline our lives and make things easier for our family we have once again started making up freezer meals. My goal was to spend one entire day grocery shopping and cooking up meals for the freezer. The first step when doing this sort of thing is to decide on the meal and grocery lists.

I am not a morning person to say the least. So breakfast items were a must for our freezer stockpile. My husband also needs to take his lunch and dinner to work every day. Finding the time to stop what I am doing each day in the middle of school work to make his lunch just wasn't happening. With that in mind I added some simple freezable lunch items as well. This had the added benefit of allowing the children to make their own hot lunch when ever they were tired of sandwiches.

Our freezer inventory:

Breakfasts:
Breakfast burritos
pancake muffins
breakfast sandwiches
breakfast casseroles
pancakes
baked oatmeal

Lunches:
Chicken taquitos
pizza bagles
chicken burritos
individual enchiladas
ham and cheese sliders
pizza pockets
individual chicken pot pies

Dinners:
French onion chicken
Honey soy pork tenderloin
smothered pork chops
sweet and sour meatballs
shredded beef tacos
french dip sandwiches
chicken alfredo
chicken with black beans
chicken pot pie
chili
broccoli chicken casserole
Pepperoni ziti casserole
tortilla casserole
tatertot casserole
taco pasta bake
chicken tetrazinni

After what seemed like a lifetime in the grocery store we managed to bring home all of the supplies needed for our freezer cooking spree.

I had the children pile all of the groceries up on the kitchen counter and then I began assembling the meals. I started with the crock pot meals and then progressed through the casseroles. Once all of the dinner meals were finished I began working on the breakfast and lunch items.

Being able to simply pull a meal out of the freezer for each of the three meals a day has been such a blessing! Cutting out the time spent cooking and prepping meals has allowed me to streamline my schedule and add in other things that have to be accomplished each day. Things such as laundry and mopping. Not that I enjoy these things mind you. They kinda have to happen though....unless we want to walk around naked. As appealing as the idea of no laundry sounds the neighbors might frown on that.

I would love to know how you streamline your life.