Meal Planning

Quick Meal Planning Guide

When it comes to meal planning, it is really important to stay organized and the best way to do that is with a family calendar.  

If you are a very busy mom like me (I feel like I can't even sit down most days!)  It can be very intimidating to look in my refrigerator at 5 pm to see what I have available for dinner at 6:30.  
To ease this anxiety, I plan out every meal from breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner, and even desserts, in my family calendar.  

Here are some really quick and easy tips to starting your meal planning journey!

1.) If you don't have one already, start a calendar.  This calendar should have all of your families activities on it so that you can plan for the amount of time you have to make a meal.  If you have a soccer game at 6, then you may not have time for an elaborate meal, those are the nights we have something that I either set up in the crock-pot or have prepared ahead to reheat.  

2.) Have a list of the meals your family eats regularly with you when you are planning.  

3.) Have your recipes on hand during your meal planning session.  I have a binder that I keep all of my budget friendly go-to recipes in.  This binder helps me to prepare a complete grocery list for all of the meals that I want to make that week by allowing me to see the ingredients that I may not keep in the house on a regular basis.

4.) Know the contents of your pantry and refrigerator.  Before I plan my meals for the week, I do an inventory of items that I already have on hand.  I can usually come up with two or three meals just from the items that I have!  Those immediately go on my calendar for the week.

5.) Be consistent.  Even missing one week of meal planning can throw off your budget for the week.  This has happened to me, especially when my semester was coming to an end in May and I was busy doing homework every night.  The result was four nights in a row of eating out!  Our budget was rocked a bit and by the end of the week my kids were begging me to cook!  

This is what my calendar looks like on a good week (one where I didn't make any changes to the schedule.)  Sometimes I change the meals around, like if something unexpected comes up and I don't have time to make something ahead.  But for the most part, I try to stick to the plan.