7 Simple Tips to Make Cooking at Home Easier (and save money!)

Trying to figure out how to stop eating out and save more money by cooking at home instead? These simple tips will help you eat at home more and avoid grabbing takeout, even when life is busy. 

With the holidays right around the corner, there are always extra activities to add to our schedule- decorating, annual cookie baking, Christmas parties, Christmas work dinners, family get-togethers and, of course, gift shopping, too!

To add to the craziness, this year we bought a house and are fixing it up, plus getting ready to move!

As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to maintain my sanity over the next couple of months. For me, meals are a biggie. If I don’t have some sort of plan in place, I know it’s going to be awfully tempting to order takeout or grab some fast food.

The problem is that doing that is not only unhealthy, it’s also a great way to blow through your budget fast!

So I’ve decided to implement some strategies that should keep things fairly low stress and still help me cook at home more, without breaking the bank. Maybe you’ll find them helpful in getting through this busy season too!

How to Cook at Home and Stop Eating Out

1.  Have a Meal Plan
Weekly or monthly menu planning can be a great money and sanity saver. And while it works well for most people, I’ve tried it and have never been able to stick it out long-term. But I do still try to have a plan.

What works best for me is to make a list of 5 or 6 meals I have the ingredients for and then choose from them throughout the week. Or if I don’t do that, I’ll spend a couple of minutes each evening planning out the meals for the following day.

The key is to determine what works for you when it comes to successful meal planning and then do that consistently.

2.  Keep Things Simple
I love a meal with lots of variety as much as anyone else, but sometimes we need to remember that it’s okay to keep it basic and simple. Keeping a list of quick and easy meals you always have the ingredients for is super helpful.

Breakfast for dinner is one of my go-to quick meals. Another is homemade cream of tomato soup, served with cheese and sometimes bread. And these Salsa Ranch Chicken Wraps are great too.

Related: 45 Frugal 30-Minute Dinner Ideas

3.  Prep Food Ahead
This is a big one for me! Eating healthy when we’re busy can be hard. But if I can take just an hour or so every week and wash lettuce for salads, chop veggies, cook meat, etc., it helps make meal prep much less stressful on those busy days.

If a recipe calls for a 1 pound of hamburger that needs to be browned, I often will do a second pound as well and then have it ready for another recipe later on. It takes very little extra time, but it helps make meal prep quicker on another night of the week!

4.  Make Some Homemade Freezer Meals
This takes the prepping food ahead idea a step further. For me, it means I’ll dedicate some time each week to make food that I can freeze to have handy to pull out later for a quick meal or at least a quick addition to a meal.

Sometimes I dedicate an afternoon to this, but most of the time, I simply double recipes that I’m already making and freeze half.

Some things that freeze well are pasta dishes like my Oven Ready Lasagna, bread-based dishes like Amish Turkey Stuffing, burritos (I’ve done breakfast ones as well as bean burritos), Baked Oatmeal, cakes, cookies and muffins.

5.  Consider the Cost
Have you ever calculated how much money you save when you eat at home instead of eating out? It’s difficult for our family to get a good, filling meal for less than $75, and most of the time it costs more. But, we can typically eat a from-scratch meal at home for at least one quarter of that!

That alone has been a big motivator and has helped me be more okay with not eating out or grabbing fast food very often. It especially helps if I can envision that $56+ we are saving going toward the expense of an item that I really want!

6.  Stock Convenience Foods
My goal is to make the majority of our food from scratch, but I also occasionally fall back on the convenience of ready-made food, too– especially when it means my stress level will be greatly reduced!

I try to always have some chicken nuggets and frozen pizzas in the freezer to use on days when things don’t go as planned and I don’t have time to make a homemade meal.

Yes, it costs more than making food from scratch. But it’s still much cheaper than grabbing take-out or going out to eat!

7. Have Some Set Meals
Whether this is always having the same thing for breakfast, or having pizza every Friday night or rotating between 3 different things for lunch, having a few “set” meals can be an easy way to make things easier!

This is one of the things that helps to save my sanity when it comes to cooking at home. For both breakfast and lunch, we have only a few options that we typically choose from. Sunday nights are the same- we either have grilled tuna sandwiches or quesadillas of some sort, along with Frozen Fruit Smoothie.

It means there is one less thing for me to have to make a decision about!

Other posts that you’ll enjoy:

• 8 Simple Hacks to Save Money on Groceries
• 40 Foods to Freeze to Save Time and Money
• $50 Aldi Meal Plan: 7 Dinners, Family of 5
• 7 Simple Hacks to Reduce Food Waste and Save Money
• 30 Best Easy Homemade Soup Recipes