Guest post from Julia of Swirls and Spice
After I married my husband, he suggested that I stop cooking on Sundays. This was an adjustment for me, and somewhat surprising since both of us come from families where our mothers served a traditional Sunday dinner after church.
Furthermore, cooking is one of my favorite parts of homemaking, and yielding control of the kitchen is not easy for me. However, after making this our Sunday habit, I am thankful for the blessings of rest and refreshment that have come.
Four children and several moves later, we now find ourselves in the suburbs of Chicago, where the restaurant selection is amazing and quite enticing.
However, feeding six people isn’t cheap when we are intentionally not cooking at home. Eating out four to five times a month was costing us nearly $300 — and that figure was separate from our grocery budget, which covered all of our other meals at home.
Living on one income and spending so much money on restaurant food was simply not sustainable.
After pondering our predicament, my husband came up with a cost-cutting strategy that still gives me a break from the kitchen on Sundays. We get take-out food for one meal, and heat up prepared meals for the other. The take-out food could be anything from fried rice to Papa John’s pizza; and for the other meal, we rotate between several different convenience foods like Hot Pockets and taquitos.
After taking these measures, our restaurant spending went down by half. (September’s total was just $136.)
My husband also has taken charge of microwaving or baking the food we eat on Sunday. However, our older children are also capable of following the heating directions if we ever decide to go that route.
At the end of the day, I am thankful that we get two hot meals without me working in the kitchen for the whole day. After my break, I’m recharged to plan the remaining meals for the week, which I enjoy preparing mostly from scratch with whole food ingredients.
Living debt-free doesn’t necessarily mean a family has to stop eating from restaurants. So much of developing a budget comes down to prioritizing what your values are.
By tracking our spending and planning carefully, it is possible to live inside our means and not feel guilty about taking a day off from cooking. The resulting freedom helps me to move beyond survival mode and avoid burnout as I serve my family.
Developing recipes with healthy, affordable ingredients is one of Julia’s favorite pursuits. At her blog, Swirls and Spice, you’ll find a growing collection of dairy-free recipes.
