Have you heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”? This can be applied to a lot of areas of life, and certainly to meal planning! The weeks that I don’t plan our dinners, my husband and I don’t eat healthy meals and we blow our budget on eating out at the last minute. To help meet both our health goals and budget goals, I sit down every Sunday and plan out our week of dinners. In this blog post I’m going to walk you through the exact steps of how I meal plan for our family every week in less than 20 minutes. I also included a free meal planner template in the blog resource library so that you can start crafting your own family meal plan this week! Sign up now and download the Canva free meal planner template HERE.

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MEAL PLAN WITH YOUR CALENDAR

The first thing that I do when I meal plan is I grab my calendar and see what activities we planned during the week.  On our busy days I plan for an instant pot recipe, or I plan to eat leftovers from the night before. One of the worst mistakes that I’ve made in the past is planning a dinner that involves multi-steps only to realize we won’t be home until 8:00pm that night! Don’t do that to yourself. Instead, look at your calendar beside your free meal planner template (download here) and decide which nights you will have the time to make a meal, and which nights you need to make something easy and quick.

PLAN THREE BIG MEALS

My secret to meal planning during the week- I don’t cook everyday! I do like to cook, but I’m also a tired mom raising 3 little kids and I honestly don’t feel like cooking every night. So, I make it easy on myself and I plan to cook 3-4 big meals a week. I double the recipes of those meals and we eat the leftovers the other days of the week. Look at your favorite family meals and pick 3-4 meals that you can commit to cooking that week. Make sure you double each recipe so that you have leftovers to eat for dinner later in the week. 

PLAN ONE DAY TO EAT OUT

In our family we like to eat out once a week for dinner. Since we have little kids right now, we usually order take out from a favorite local restaurant. I like to plan this into my meal plan because I simply like the variety of eating something different. I usually pick a restaurant that has food that I’m not likely to make at home. If it’s in your budget, mark in your free meal planner template which day your family is going to eat out at a restaurant. This also works well if there is a day in the week that kids have lots of sports or other activities and you need to pick up something on the run. 

MAKE A FLEXIBLE PLAN

I don’t typically plan meals for a certain day of the week, other than the day that we are going to eat out. What works for my family is I plan to cook 3 meals a week, but I don’t write the meals down on a certain day. Instead, I just list each meal under the heading of “Meal 1”, Meal 2”, etc… In the past I have meal planned specific to the day of the week, only to run late on that day and not have time to cook what I planned. When I plan my weekly meals I create a flexible plan in which any meal can be cooked on any day of the week. 

On the free meal planner template (download here) I leave a space for the heading so that you can do it either way! Some people really like to micro- plan the meal for the specific days. Other people like to be more fluid in the week like myself. Either way of meal planning works, and so I made two templates to accomodate both styles of meal planning. 

MEAL PLAN DINNER TIME ONLY

You might have noticed that I focused on meal planning for dinners, but left out breakfast and lunch. The reason for this is because I don’t typically create a structured plan for breakfast and lunch. For me, these two meals are easy to throw together quickly. However, dinner is the weak spot for me because it’s later at night and all of the kids are fussy at that time of the day. I like to clear my mental space by making it easy on myself and make a plan for when decision fatigue sets in at the end of the day. However, feel free to use the free meal planner template (download here) to also plan breakfast and lunch if you are inspired to do so!

What is going into your meal plan this week?

Don’t forget to join the resource library and get your copy of the free meal planner template- DOWNLOAD HERE. 

Having trouble getting dinner on the table each night? Read my blog post to discover my 3 best “mom hacks” for getting dinner on the table without the chaos.