The "Les Belles Combines" Storage Method

One day, we discovered cabin life and its long weekends of fun and relaxation! Every Friday evening, we would rush to leave the house for this dream place, and when Sunday came, we would try to stretch out every minute to make the most of those two saving days.

We all have good reasons to want to fully enjoy our weekends. Unfortunately, it is very common for these two days off to be used to catch up on the past week's tasks and plan for the coming week's! As Katrina Onstad so aptly puts it in her book Where's My Weekend?, "our desire to protect time is in constant conflict with the need to make use of it." I was fully experiencing this duality, and the need to find a new way to manage food supplies to free up time and allow us to savor it was increasingly present.

That's when we embarked on the "stocking" project. After some research, I discovered the valuable services of Alimentation Triple A, which offers home delivery services a few times a year for various cuts of meat and frozen foods, as well as a wide variety of pantry products. With the precious help of my husband, we transformed a small room in the basement into a storage space and strategically furnished it with a freezer, a shelf, and a fridge. Many of you may not have the space... but by taking the time to declutter and organize your home, you will undoubtedly be able to free up that closet or space under the stairs.

I then set about making a list of all the basic foods that can be stocked; these are foods we consume regularly, are non-perishable, or that I know we can eat before their expiry date, just to easily know what to put on my Triple A order over the months. I have also turned this list into a little trick that you can download online right here. Once every three months, list in hand, I go through my storage bins in both the kitchen and my storage space and check off missing items. I also invite you to read my article Storage 101 to learn about my object storage technique. All that's left is to adjust my Triple A order, which should help us last about three months. Once a week, I do a small additional grocery run to buy only fresh produce (milk, fruits and vegetables, etc.).

Stocking has several benefits for us:

• Large containers are more economical. For example, buying a large "pail" of mayonnaise will cost you less than the equivalent amount in small jars of mayonnaise.
• Large containers are also more ecological. For example, by washing and refilling the same small jar of mayonnaise, you will consume less plastic.
• Stocking saves time. Having so much food on hand makes it easier to improvise a weeknight meal, not to mention that the time spent on weekly visits to the grocery store or pharmacy is shortened. Since we only go for emergencies or fresh foods, we can do this on a weeknight after work. This leaves the entire weekend free for us!

Of course, this quarterly grocery trip will be very expensive upfront! You will need to organize your finances accordingly. Here, we use a credit card that we repay in the following weeks. That being said, in the end, we save about $300 a month this way, in addition to having the pleasure of having a mini-grocery store at our disposal in the basement. Every week, I plan meals based on what's available there. I bring up to the kitchen the foods we will consume in the coming week. And every three months, my supplies are restocked directly at home thanks to Triple A's services, without me even having to lift a finger! Does that sound good to you? I also invite you to consult the La Presse+ article on this topic, which features my whole family!

Finally, for other practical tools to download that will help you better plan your family's meals, click here!