Meal planning is one of the essential steps to saving money and time while making sure your family eats healthy meals everyday. Yet, the task of meal planning can seem overwhelming and tedious, especially when life is already so busy. My hope is that this post will provide an introduction to meal planning, offering creative and easy strategies to make the process simple and achievable.
1) Benefits of Meal Planning.
The main benefit of meal planning is… how much head space you’ll clear and the stress you take away from having that nagging thought at the back of your mind to “come up” with “something” for dinner every-single-day! It’s exhausting and until you do meal plan for a week and try it out, you won’t ev en know what I’m talking about!
Another benefit is the money you save. You can plan your meals around whatever is on sale in your grocery store or whatever you have in your pantry. You’ll also save money when you plan your meals around everyone’s schedule. Don’t cook food that goes to waste or get take away because you forgot you finished late on Thursday!
And, time is money my friend, so, the less time you spend thinking about dinner the more you can spend… on whatever you want!
2) Making Meal Planning Easier.
One of my tips to making it easy when meal planning is to plan to bulk cook. You can find more about it here. What I mean is, if you are making chili con carne, brown double the meat and before you start adding the other ingredients. Separate the meat and you can make bolognese sauce for spaghetti and even a lasagna dish! Whatever your people like to eat most. The same with vegetables, if you are roasting vegetables, roast more than you need for the meal. Then use them to make a vegetarian lasagna. The options are endless and just like that, you have 3 meals taken care of!
Another thing to make meal planning easier is to start creating a recipe book, virtual or physical, with the recipes you love most. I love anything that I can dump into my slow cooker and it’s ready at dinner time. I love cooking but not when I need to, only when I want to! I make some mean chicken breasts with pesto sauce… just saying! Put it all in the slow cooker, leave for 4 hours and add some rice or pasta and you’re done!
3) Easy Meal Planning Strategies.
I usually meal plan on Fridays or Saturdays because I do my grocery shopping on Sunday mornings. I usually sit on the couch with my grocery list and my weekly meal planner sheet (both of which I’m gifting you with my newsletter this week or you can go here and get them for free). I usually have a coffee or tea by my side and nice music or a YT video on… This is a ritual I actually look forward to because I can search my recipes on Pinterest here or here.
One thing to remember is, you have to cook food that your people are going to eat. There’s no use buying tuna because it’s on sale and no one likes tuna… I feel tempted sometimes, too!
4) Choose and Track Your Grocery List.
If you’ve been here long enough, you know I love a no-spending week (or month!). This helps with reseting my finances but it also helps me to eat everything in the pantry or freezer. I may or may not have been guilty of keeping meat until it changed color and had to be thrown out… Because I’ve been doing this for a while now, I get basically the same staples over and over again. My people don’t mind eating the same thing 3 times a month, just not twice in the same week, so I try to change it up. FYI, it happens that they have the same thing twice in the same week, oh well!
By tracking your grocery list, you can buy staples on sale if you know you will use them. Also with your favourite basics you are sure to always have something to cook at the last minute. (which is exactly what we are trying to avoid with this post!!!) Oh well, it happens! Just like budgeting, meal planning takes practice and it will get better but every once in a while… life happens and the best laid plans go up in smoke! If that happens, it’s time to get back to it as quickly as possible!
5) Sticking to Meal Planning.
I can give you all the reasons why you should stick to meal planning and why it’s life changing… But if you are resisting it, there’s nothing anyone can do or say to make you believe in meal planning. Now, I will say this, compare meal planning to wearing a uniform. At the beginning, I feel like resisting it, I want to wear what I want (just like eating!) but by the second month of wearing a uniform it’s unbelievable how much it takes away the pressure of choosing what to wear each day, I can get up 10 minutes before leaving because I know exactly what I’m wearing and I don’t need to think about it or try 3 different outfits to find “the one”. Am I right?!
Overall, meal planning can be benefit the whole family. It will be good for your health, budget, and quality of life, no doubt about it! With the right steps in place, meal planning can be much simpler and more enjoyable than it appears. While the process can take some time to learn and practice, once it becomes a habit, it will become easier and more efficient.
Try meal planning for the upcoming week to experience the ease and convenience it can bring to your family’s meals. Let me know how it went! Send me an email or leave me a comment!
