Sound familiar? Here’s what I know: you can’t beat yourself up for what’s gone on before. You can acknowledge and accept responsibility for your actions, but then it’s time to be proactive, learn the lesson and move on.

Here are a few tips on how to make your trips to the grocery store more productive:

Don’t go shopping for food when you’re hungry. This I’m sure you’ve heard dozens of times, but I believe it bears repeating. When you’re shopping and hungry, it’s really easy to overbuy—whether that means picking up items you don’t need or too much of an item you actually want. Example: You don’t need that Sara Lee cheesecake and you don’t need 40 pounds of russet potatoes. 
 
Don’t buy more than you need. Stores use math and packaging to manipulate you into buying more than you need. For example, if you need one bell pepper  for a recipe, don’t buy a package of three. Just pick out a loose—and preferably organic—one.  
     Likewise, don’t let the math fool you. Case in point: I needed two pears for a recipe, so my beloved and I stopped by the store to buy pears. I found two organic pears at 89 cents a piece; he found a bag of six pears for $3.49 (sounds like a 5th grade math problem… If Maia buys 2 pears at 89 cents and Brian buys six pears for $3.49, who carries the groceries to the car?). So of course we had the conversation about which was the “better buy.” 
     I conceded, of course, that his pears were, in fact, 30 cents cheaper per pear. Seems like the wiser choice, no? No, and here’s why (read: how Maia got her organic pears):  1) I only needed two pears, what would I do with the other four? Even with the best of intentions to find something else to do with them, chances were good that since I had no plan in place for them, they would end up going bad before I used them. 2) We’ve made great strides in moving to a virtually exclusively organic way of eating, so why compromise over a 30-cent difference on fruit?  3) Here’s where my mad math skills came into play and foiled the store’s attempt to make me spend more money. Why spend $3.49 at all when I really only needed to spend $1.78? Or to put it in perspective, why spend nearly double the dollars on poorer quality produce knowing that two-thirds of it would more than likely go to waste?
     See? Packaging and math—watch out for them.

Clean out the refrigerator before you go food shopping. See what you already have on hand and use it up. For example, I know that right now in my refrigerator I have a good amount of red cabbage—and I make a yummy red cabbage salad with apples and lingonberries. So that’s on this week’s menu. I also know that I have the apples, but I’m out of lingonberry preserves and Dijon mustard, so those items are on the list. Ta da! I’m making a delicious dish out of food that I already have. The cabbage won’t go to waste and there will be room in my refrigerator and my budget for some other healthy and delicious food.
     It takes only a few minutes to do a quick inventory of what’s in the fridge and it’s definitely worth taking the time to do it. First of all, you’ll know what you already have on hand to use and secondly, you’ll be less likely to run out of something you need. When you’re home putting away the groceries, that’s not the time to discover that you’re out of butter or juice.

Make a deal with yourself to try one or more of these tips and see how it makes a difference—and don’t forget to stop back and let me know how it worked out!

First things first. I don’t make resolutions. Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of a brand-new beginning with a fresh, clean slate. Being a “Monday” sort of girl, I even feel a little giddy when the first day of a new year falls on the first day of a new week. Sunday notwithstanding, of course. But resolutions, to me, seem so…well, resolute. It’s too easy to get tripped up early on and then have the excuse of waiting until next New Year’s Day to repeat the cycle. Again. So I set goals instead. Setting goals gives us a much better shot at succeeding than does resolving to do/not do something from now on/ever again. 

New Year’s Day may have come and gone, but it’s still not too late to start planning those positive changes you’ve been mulling over. That’s right, I said, “planning.” It’s amazing to me how we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that if we just have enough willpower, we can miraculously become fit, healthy, organized, energetic individuals who volunteer, increase our earning potential and master a foreign language—all without a plan.

Take Inventory

Before you can get to where you’re going, you have to first figure out where you are. For example, if you dream of running a marathon, you have to start by figuring out how far you’re able to run today. Think of this step as taking a kind of self-administered aptitude test. The most important thing is to be honest and realistic. I’ve always found this Lao Tsu quote so inspiring: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

Set Attainable Goals

If your goal is to find time to exercise and you’re a chronic snooze-button-pusher, then resolving to get up a half-hour earlier every day probably isn’t the best choice for you. Instead, try looking at the rest of your day. Can you take a walk after lunch or dinner? Can you find an exercise class that fits into your existing schedule? Maybe getting fit begins with the simple step of parking at the far end of the parking lot or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. It’s these small, simple steps that are going to take you the farthest.

Get Your Priorities Straight

If you are hitting the snooze every morning, it might be time to take a look at the reasons why. If getting up half an hour earlier to exercise is something you want to make a priority, then think about getting to bed a little earlier the night before. A year from now, would you rather being feeling healthy and fit or still taking comfort in the fact that at least you never missed Letterman’s Top Ten List? Or maybe it’s that afternoon trip to Starbucks that’s keeping you up at night in which case you need to decide which is more important to you: your mocha latte or a good night’s sleep?

These are just a couple of things to keep in mind as you journey into the New Year. As for me, one of my goals is to be more flexible—and that is why I am posting this blog on neither the first of the year nor a Monday. 
 
 

Look Before You Leap
 
This is very important: If you’re using a recipe, read through it—in its entirety—first, thereby eliminating one of those “Oh, rats (or your favorite expletive)!” moments when you realize too late that you were supposed to chill, soak or otherwise prepare something ahead of time—or that the cooking time exceeds the time by which your guests will be arriving by several hours. Trust me. You’ll thank me for this.
This is also the time to make sure you have all the ingredients—or if you don’t, you can decide what substitutions you’re brave enough to make.

Get it Together

Get your ingredients together before you start cooking. In accordance with my Virgo nature, I line them all up on the counter in the order in which I’ll be using them. You can line them up any way you want to; the important thing is to get all your ingredients in front of you, so you can do a headcount. Make sure you have everything—and enough of it.
To simplify the cleaning-up process, I put away each item after I’ve used it. By the time I’m finished, all my ingredients have either been used or put away! 

Wash and Go

The clean-up-as-you-go method works really well for all your pots, pans and utensils, too. I use whatever spare seconds I have to quickly wash up any items I’m done with so I won’t have a huge mess to contend with when I’m done.

These are the tricks and tips that work for me—feel free to share your own!