Why and How I Meal Plan

Meal planning may seem like a lot of work, or a pain in the behind, but it has really helped me stay on top of a busy schedule. I find it so much easier to know what we are doing for dinner on any given day so that I don't find myself starving at 6:00 on a Wednesday when Stella has drum lessons at 6:30. I CANNOT wait until 8:00 to eat dinner. I get hangry, and nobody likes it when I'm hangry. For us, our family just functions better on a schedule. That schedule will include "Freebie" nights when we order a pizza or something, but I usually schedule those nights when we have 100 different things going on. My good friend Angie, The Meal Planning Mama  ( http://mealplanningmama.com/ ) has tons of great tips, and the one that I think is most important is to consider what your family has going on during the week to work around it. For example, this coming Thursday I have to be at school for a PTA meeting by 5:15, so that night we will do what I call "Choose Your Own Adventure", since I won't have time to cook. That means we eat whatever we scrounge up: leftovers, sandwiches, etc.

 Here is a copy of the sheet that I use to plan our week:

It's a pretty simple chart: day of the week plus all the things I need to prepare the meals. I can see what I need to buy, take out of the freezer and prep ahead of time. I fill this in the same time that I make my grocery list for the week, usually on Sunday afternoons. You can see that we will be going out Friday :)

I keep this hanging on the fridge so I can reference it each day to prepare for the evening. If there are things I can prep ahead of time, like chopping veggies or marinating meat the night before, it saves me time when I need to cook.  Also, if we need to swap things around, no biggie, having everything purchased and prepped makes it easy to do so.

Anything that makes my life easier and more organized makes me happy.