Supper Selector

I have been trying to save money by not going out to eat as much as I have in the past.  My family would go out to eat a lot, sometimes twice a day!  My husband works somewhat close to home so we would meet him for lunch or he would pick up something on his way home and then supper time would come and I wouldn't feel like cooking anything so we could go out again.  This bad habit not only hurt out pocketbook but also our waste lines.  We started making a menu on Sunday nights for the upcoming week.  This way everyone had a say in what we were going to have, no complaining about the food because it was already determined because it was on the menu.  We have been doing this since about the beginning of the year and we are starting to have trouble coming up with what to eat.  My solution to this problem is the Supper Selector.  I wrote down most of our main meal items onto clothes pins (we don't have a clothes line at our house and they were laying around not being used), and each week we will draw our meals out out the jar. 


Here is how I made our Supper Selector.

 Gather up as many clothespins as you have menu items for.

Write each menu item on a clothespin.  I should of gone to the store and bought a fine tipped permanent marker as the one I used doesn't look the best.

Place in a large jar.  My mom is a cook and brought me this nice large one.  If I find more recipes that the kids like I have plenty of space to add more clothespins to the jar.

I cut out letters from magazines and glued them on with Modge Podge.  I only put Modge Podge on the back, you could decorate the jar however you want.

Grab 7 clothespins out of the jar for the week.

I clipped them to the top of the jar, but I may clip them to the calendar.  I figure once they are drawn we can put them in whatever order we want depending on what our schedule looks like for the week.  Some meals are easier to make than others, so those will be for when we don't have anything going on at night.  I also think we will make sure to pick for the following week before putting them back in the jar that way we don't have the same thing two weeks in a row.

Ideally I would like to have the ingredients listed also, so I may have to find a different solution to the clothespin.  It would be nice to have the ingredients listed on the back so that I can make shopping lists easier without having to search my cookbook to see what I need.  I have most of my recipes in one book so maybe I will just reference page numbers on the back instead or the things that I don't normally stock.


Here's hoping that the Supper Selector works and we can stick to what's on the menu!

Have a good day!