If you’ve followed me long enough, you know that I live by meal planning. It is one of my top productivity hacks. After a long day at work or taking care of the kids I really don’t have the desire to think about dinner. I also have 2 hungry toddlers and an infant, so creating a schedule for their meals allows me to lessen my overwhelm. I just want to know what I’m making…and make it. Now meal planning doesn’t mean I’m restricted by what I planned, but it does give me a good starting point. If you’re looking to create some structure to your meals, keep reading to get some insight into my monthly process.
CREATE A MEAL LIST
This is where I start. I have a list of about 15-25 meals that we eat on the regular for each meal of the day. One thing that I’ve noticed when I talk to other moms about meal planning is that they tend to start from scratch every single time. The truth is that we are creatures of habit and we don’t stray too far away from our typical meals. Write down a list of all your family’s favorite meals. This wait you don’t always have to start from scratch. When you are ready to meal plan for the month, pull out that list and plug in the meals! Honestly, having a meal list is the step that I see most people overlook. Once you have your meal list, choose how frequently you want to update it. For example, for us, some of the meals that are in rotation for the summer months are different than what we’d eat in the winter. I also add any new meals that we may have tried and enjoyed the month before. I tend to review my meal list month and make minor changes like adding new recipes but my main updates are seasonally. Do what works for you and your family.
INCORPORATE NEW RECIPES
Having a list of meals can get boring really quickly unless you find ways to spice it up a bit. That’s why I try to make at least 2-3 new recipes a month. Sometimes the recipe is just a new twist on a meal already on our list. Other times, it’s a completely new dish. I find new recipes many places but my go to places are Pinterest, Instagram, or Youtube. The key is to have a list of new recipes that you can pull from while you’re doing your weekly meal plan review. If you don’t have a list you’re going to go down the search rabbit hole and that will waste time. Right now, I use clickup to plan and organize my life. While I’m on any of these socials during the week and a recipe I would like to try pops ups, I simply add it to my clickup board. That is the board I go to to find new recipes. There are so many reciepes out there so it’s best to be disciplined when looking for new ideas; if not you’ll end up in an unending scroll. Having a board where I save things I want to try saves me from that rabbit hole. So if the meal is a hit, I add it to our meal list and it joins our meal rotation. If not, we just don’t make it again. I recently made this asun rice and it was a hit. I’ve now moved it from my “Recipes to Try” list to our “Meal List”. Being intentional about planning for new recipes keeps our dinners fresh and gives me new ideas for our meal rotation.
KEEP YOUR CALENDAR IN MIND
You don’t want to meal plan only to realize that you won’t be home that time or your schedule is busy that day and what you need instead is a quick dish. I make sure to cross-check my plan with important dates for that month. If we’ve been invited to a function where dinner will be served, I know there’s no need for me to plan for dinner that night. On my meal plan, I’ll write something like “Dinner at [insert event]”. There are other times where I’m home but I just know I can’t make dinner that night because the day is going to be hectic. That’s a night where I might do a slow cooker meal or a dish that is ready in under 30 minutes. It also helps to have a night where you don’t cook at all. Thursday nights are our leftover nights. I really try not to waste food so Thursdays is when we pull everything out of the fridge and find something to eat from that. In there rare instance that there’s no food in the fridge, we order. Meal planning is closely tied to your monthly calendar and I feel that to be truly successful and consistent with meal planning it’s best you are also on top of your personal and family calendar.
CHECK INVENTORY AND FINALIZE THE DETAILS
This is the most important part. Like I said, my monthly meal plan is a loose plan. It gives me a starting point but it doesn’t restrict me. My weekly planning is when I finalize the meals and create the grocery list, if necessary. We do our groceries once a month so the weekly grocery run is really for items that finish quickly, like milk or plantain, or items that we need for a new recipe that isn’t normally in our inventory. My weekly review is where I also edit or add any side dishes. For example, if I planned steak and fries but I notice that I have some potatoes that are about to go bad if I don’t use them this week, I might change that to steak and baked/mashed potatoes. Create your plan for the month, take an inventory of what is already at home for that upcoming week, and adjust the plan as needed. This helps me save money and limit waste. Reducing how much food we waste is a big goal of mine.
Planning for the month may not be easy at first but once you get the hang of it you’ll see how much time and brain power it saves you in the long run. If you feel that planning the whole month will be too overwhelming, try weekly planning, like I did, until you feed confident to increase to the whole month.
