BeckyMost recently, meal planning has become a lifesaver in my family. If it weren’t for meal planning, I don’t know how I’d get through a week of grocery shopping and dinner! While meal planning can be overwhelming in the beginning, once you have a system in place, it’s so easy to get ahead each week.
Let me tell you a little story about the events that occurred last week. I was under the weather last weekend and while I had meal planned for the whole week, NOTHING sounded good last week. My poor husband and son had to wing it for meals. Each night, whatever I had intended on making for dinner, was not what ended up being made. My husband helped out a ton and made meals for he and my son.
What it taught me is that without meal planning, life gets crazy over here! We’d go back to our old ways of wasting a ton of money on groceries that have no real purpose for the week ahead and we’d have no game plan as far as getting dinner on the table. As I mentioned in THIS post, meal planning gives your grocery budget a boost while giving your weekly meals a little more structure.
Let me walk you through how I meal plan for an upcoming week.
Make a list of meals
When I first started meal planning, I found it easier to make a list of meals that my family enjoyed eating and were easy to make. I’ve recently updated that list with new meals since it’s been roughly a year since I started meal planning! Pinterest is chalk full of fun, easy and healthy recipes. There’s no limit to the recipes you can put on your list. You can even include old family recipes.
The one thing I would advise is to have roughly 30 meals on your list so that you’re not making the same 7 meals each week. 30 meals can be spread across a month and rotated around accordingly. That’s not to say you can’t make the same recipe twice in a 2-week span, but just for the sake of not getting sick of the same recipes, have a decent sized list to begin.
Choose your meals for the week
Once you’ve got a good list of meals going, pick a day each week prior to grocery shopping to choose meals off that list. I generally select 6-7 meals from my list on Friday afternoon before I grocery shop over the weekend. Some weeks we plan to eat out once on the weekend, meaning I don’t have to plan a meal for EVERY night and other weeks I only select 5-6 recipes because some recipes are big enough to carry over as leftovers for the following night.
Check your cupboards/pantry
After you’ve finalized your meals for the upcoming week, check to see which ingredients you have on hand. Delve into the recipes step by step so you know exactly what ingredients you’ll need and how much.
If I’m being honest, this is where I tend to struggle! I either won’t buy enough of an ingredient, or I won’t realize I already have it on hand, and I’ll buy an additional one unnecessarily. Don’t be me! This is when an organized cupboard and pantry come in handy.
Make a grocery list
The last step before your trip to the grocery store is making your grocery list. This step is crucial in saving you money. I like to organize my grocery list by category and how the store is laid out. I’ll organize my dairy items, meats, freezer, etc. This is personally how I like to do it. Do whatever works best for you though. Now that you’ve reviewed your recipes and which ingredients you need to buy, make your grocery list and you’re ready to hit the store!
I would just like to say, I know this is incredibly difficult at times, but don’t you dare stray from that list! This is where people bust their grocery budgets. Once you have a solid grocery list, STICK TO THE LIST and you’re gold!
All you have left to do is plan which meal you’ll make on what night, but honestly, plans fluctuate in my household. I’ll use my planner to roughly decide on which meal we’ll make on what nights, but we tend to move them around as needed during the week. Knowing that some meals take longer than others, you’ll be able to move meals around as needed throughout the week.
An additional tip for meal planning! Lately I’ve started double batching some meals I make for dinner so that I can freeze the second batch. I’ll throw it in the freezer to heat up the following month or whenever we’re in a pinch and need something easy to make for dinner.
That’s it! Can you believe it?! You made it through a week of meal planning!!! You can do this. Just think of the time and money you’ll be saving when you start your meal planning.
