I absolutely love to cook. I always have, but since moving into my own place and having my own kitchen I’ve sort of exploded. This weekend, I successfully navigated my first solo pot roast and made bagels from scratch. Cooking, especially the kind of extreme cooking you associate with grandmothers or holidays, feels at once frugally sensible and cozily luxurious. The bagels, in particular, felt like a flying feat of domestic prowess.

Since I’ve been working 9 to 5, I’ve mostly been cooking ahead, making stews or soup (or pot roasts) each weekend and eating the frozen leftovers all weekend. They cost less, taste better and are more filling and nutritious than grocery deli sandwiches or frozen dinners.

In theory, I do everything right–I make the free coffee at work instead of buying it on the way, and I make most of my own breakfasts, lunches and snacks. In practice, though, the food I buy during the day at work tends to glare out of my expense tracker as the lamest way I make my money slowly-but-surely disappear. It’s pure laziness–so, to keep myself accountable, here are a few of the ways a tiny expense of energy pays off in cash and comfort during the week.

Planning ahead: It takes ten minutes to put together a stew or soup, and maybe three or four hours of waiting for it to cook. Technically, I don’t even need to be in the apartment for that part (though I’d rather not burn the kitchen down). There’s always time, and there’s usually motivation–the problem is that when I don’t do something so simple, I also don’t think about what I’ll do instead, and get blindsided Monday morning when I’m looking for something to pack.

Seriously. Get. Out. Of. Bed. Seriously.: I’ve always been a morning person, but there’s a difference between a college student’s morning and everyone else on the planet’s morning–about two hours different, I think. If I sleep in for fifteen or twenty minutes I still get to work on time, but I’m much more likely to be flustered, skip breakfast or forget lunch, and buy something on the way. Not to mention the stress is way worse than the comfort of sleeping in.

Lunchtime walks: My favorite brown bag hack is using my lunch break to get some exercise. I work near the major monuments in DC, so I walk a loop around Washington and Lincoln during my break and then eat at my desk. There are always corporate walkers and runners mixed in with the tourists–including lots of people talking business and networking. I feel better, I eat better, and I don’t spend any money.

Prioritize: I track going out–dinners, happy hours, bars, and coffee shops–as a different expense than weekday food because instead of making me feel guilty, this social time is important to me and worth my money. It’s often easy to talk myself out of a sandwich for lunch by thinking about how many plates of half-price BBQ chicken nachos at happy hour that sandwich is worth.

If I could just manage to stay on top of these things, that would be a start. Does anybody else find they lose money to these little recurring laziness problems–how do you keep yourself motivated?