Meal planning is one of those things that you put off over the weekend, thinking you don’t really need to spend time on it. Then you get home from work on Monday and you don’t have the ingredients to make one cohesive meal. Trust me, I get it. Meal planning is a chore. BUT- I did this meal planning in in 13 minutes! (But I sped it up so the meal plan tutorial is under 4 minutes😉)
Weekly Or Monthly Meal Planning
Over the past year, I flip-flopped between doing monthly and weekly meal planning. Weekly was my go-to for a long time. Mostly because I don’t mind meal planning so doing it once a week worked for me. A few months ago, I switched to monthly meal planning and that was nice too. It got a bulk of the work done at once and the batching freed up more time.
However, weekly meal planning is what works best for my schedule. I was finding that I would plan monthly and then a week in, plans were changing and I was redoing the plan more than once. It ended up costing me more time.
Weekly
- â–ª Need to set aside time every week to do it
- â–ª Easy to use of leftover ingredients as you plan for the next week
- â–ª Works great for families/people with ever changing schedules
Monthly
- â–ª Gets all meal planning done for the month in about one hour.
- â–ª Can save you money if you are really good at sticking to your plan
- â–ª Good for families/people who hate meal planning and know their monthly commitments in advance.
Make Time For It
Meal planning isn’t great fun but it’s necessary in our house. If I don’t get the meal plan done and the groceries ordered, I set myself up for a crappy and chaotic week. Take 30 minutes and do it. I promise you will feel so much better and your next week will go much more smooth. If you feel like you never have a minute to do anything with your kids around, try some of these strategies for keeping your kids busy while you get some work done.
Then print my Free Meal Planning Guide, grab your erasable pen or pencil and get to work. I did the meal planning tutorial below (with complete shopping list) in 13 minutes! You might take longer in the beginning so that’s why I said to set aside 30-minutes to do it. Writing the shopping list is what typically takes the longest. Power through and then either go grocery shopping or input your list in a grocery delivery service and sit back and relax because you’re done!
Writing Your Own
As you see in my meal planning tutorial, I plan my dinners first and then write their shopping list, then I plan my breakfast, lunches and snacks and then their shopping list. This is just how my brain works. You can do it however you want. I do suggest you start with dinners so you can see how you’ll utilize leftovers. If you don’t plan to utilize them for another dinner, see how you can incorporate them in lunches.
When filling in breakfasts, lunches and snacks make sure to keep it simple. Rotate through 2-3 things for each meal. This will keep the shopping list shorter and your stress less lower. My kids lunch options this week will be mac & cheese, nuggets or PB&J. Plus a fruit and veggie side which I do every week. My husband and I will be having turkey wraps or buffalo chicken wraps. No fuss, no muss. This meal plan tutorial is designed to show you how you can meal plan quickly.
Keep it Simple
Above all else, keep you plan simple and you can be done quickly. Add meals you can easily make when you don’t feel like cooking and throw in a few extra freezer section freezer meals. Just get your meal plan made and you’ll be happy you did!
Taran is a self-proclaimed undomestic mom. She thrives as a stay-at-home-mom by consistently carving out time for herself and practicing realistic self-care. As a busy mom of 3, she knows that if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy! With a focus on how SAHMs can carve out time for themselves everyday, she teaches fellow SAHMs how they can do the same.
[…] If you stumbled upon this recipe but you’re struggling with consistent meal planning, you made it to the right place! I help busy families meal plan so they can stress less at dinner. If you’d like to see exactly how I meal plan, be sure to check out my How-To Meal Plan post. If you want a more visual view, check out my 4-Minute Meal Planning Tutorial. […]