Get Organized in the Kitchen - My eMeals Review (+ Discount Code!)

One area that I really appreciate being organized in is the kitchen. I really have to work hard to keep up in the kitchen. As much as I love cooking, it's my weak area. Those of you who have been here awhile have heard me complain about doing the dishes more than once!

Getting organized in the kitchen is about more than using your space well (which I will be talking about in the upcoming monster post on organizing your life...!!!) and keeping it clean. Meal planning is a great way to get organized, stay healthy, and even save money.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who's been frantic at dinner time and ended up giving my family cereal or grabbing a pizza...

Give me a break, I just had a baby. ;)

I've known about how effective meal planning is for awhile, but it does take a bit of time to do that, even. And while it's definitely worth it, time is something I'm in somewhat short supply of these days.

So I was pretty excited to be able to review eMeals... I just signed up for a 1 year subscription and am so excited about it! I've been hearing the commercials on the Dave Ramsey show for a long time and was always interested in checking it out. Well, when I signed up and started poking around, I found that I love it even more than I thought I would - right from the sign up page!

Why????

Because they have a bunch of different meal plan options for families that have dietary preferences, including:

• Classic meals
• Portion control
• Paleo
• Natural & organic (I chose this option...)
• Gluten free
• Vegetarian
• and more...

To be honest, hearing the commercial on the Dave Ramsey show (which is a show that we listen to all the time about financial planning for those of you who aren't familiar... yes, the Worthington family can be mature......kind of..... sometimes.) had me thinking that all the meals would be budget "rice and beans" type meals. Which I'm all for, but I don't really need a plan for that type of thing. I'm so glad I was wrong! There's lots of options for whatever kind of food your family wants or needs to eat.

How it Works

eMeals makes meal planning crazy simple!

1. Choose your plan according to your family size, diet preferences, and favorite grocery store
2. Get your meal plan, recipes, and grocery list delivered to you via email each week.

What's really cool is that the grocery list is organized by section for you and is even coordinated by the sales going on that week. What?? That's amazing. I'm pretty sure that aspect alone pays for the subscription itself.

Benefits of Meal Planning

Meal planning is a great way to stay on track with healthy eating and has a number of other great benefits too:

• Save money.. no more frantic pizza runs or getting take out because you didn't have a plan.
• Get healthy... having a plan makes it so much easier to stick to a healthy diet, since you'll always have good choices available.
• Lose weight... if losing weight is a goal, having a plan can make it a lot easier to stick to your daily intake goals.
• Save time... since you know exactly what you need to buy there won't be any more of those random trips to the store. In fact, eMeals created this "family wish list" to share with you guys to go along with meal planning.. stick it up on the fridge and let your family check off the things they need. (Though you might have to encourage them to be frugal if that's one of your goals, or you can throw that "save money" benefit right out the window - haha!) 

You can download the PDF version here, too.

So if you are wanting to start meal planning in order to get organized or just stay on track with your healthy eating goals, I definitely encourage you to try eMeals! It only costs $5-14 per month (depending on how long you sign up for and what features you choose)... so even if it only saves you one frantic pizza run per month, it more than pays for itself!

Update 3/26/2013: You can currently save 10% on your subscription cost by using the eMeals discount code: easter.

I hope my eMeals review has been helpful - Happy meal planning!