Save Time and Frustration
Try Meal Planning

Meal planning. Do those words sound familiar? Is it something you have always wanted to try but just didn't know what to do? Hopefully this page can give you some ideas to help turn your dinner time chaos into a well-ordered machine.

First off, here are some reasons why I think it is important to take some time to do meal planning:

I think those are some pretty compelling reasons to organize your meals!

Now you need to decide a couple of things before we go any further.

Many people I know just plan out their dinners - they are comfortable just winging the other two meals. Other people I know plan out all three meals...and their snacks, too! Once you decide which meals you want to plan out, you then need to decide how often you want to sit down and do the planning. If you go grocery shopping once a week, then you can probably just plan out your meals for the upcoming week. If there is more time between your shopping trips, it would be better for you to plan out that many meals.

For example, I do my grocery shopping most weeks on Thursday evening. Therefore, on Thursday afternoon, I sit down with my calendar sheet for the month and plan out my dinners for the upcoming week. I will say that it makes meal planning easier if you do your shopping on the same day of each week or month.

So, what do you need to get started with your meal planning? The first thing I found helpful was to take a pad of paper and a pen to the store I shop in and write down the things that I usually buy in the order in which they appear in the store.

After I did that, I came home and typed up my list in a spreadsheet format and printed out a bunch of copies. These copies sit in my notebook on my desk in the kitchen. This way, whenever I know we need something, I just flip to the next sheet and write it down.

On Thursday when I am planning what I need, I take out my list and add the necessary items to it. This is a great time saver!

The next thing I keep is a blank calendar page (you can print one off the computer or use one of the many calendars you get in the mail) on my refrigerator. This is where I write down my meals for the week. Each Thursday I take the calendar down and plan out dinners for the upcoming week. I have tried planning a month at a time, but lately my brain just doesn't seem to be able to think that far in advance.

Other things that have helped us with meals is to plan out our breakfasts and lunches. Planning what will be served for those two meals on each day of the week helps to keep costs down, saves time, makes sure that everyone knows what to expect and keeps the dishes to a minimum. I have found that when we don't stick to our lunch schedule, lunch takes a lot longer and there are a lot more dishes to deal with.

I have also organized lists of our favorite meals by the main meat (or meatless) item that is in the recipe. This helps to jog my memory when I am trying to come up with something we haven't eaten in a while.

I have a lot of cookbooks and what usually happens is that I end up just going to the same few recipes that we have tried before because it takes too much time to look through them every week to come up with new ones. Some day, I would like to have a list of all the recipes in a cookbook that I would like to try. Then I can just scan the list and pick a few out. Some day....

I don't know about you, but eating really does take up a lot of our day. I spend more waking time in my kitchen then I do in any other room in our house.

Since homeschooling takes up another big chunk of our day, I don't want to waste time trying to figure out what to cook for dinner. I have found that meal planning really takes a load off of my brain. All I need to do each day is get up and look at the calendar to see what we will be having and go from there.

If you haven't implemented meal planning into your home, now would be an excellent time to start.