Does the thought of meal planning make your head spin? You’re not alone! As a busy mum, I know how overwhelming it can be when life is hectic, and you’re trying to figure out what’s for dinner. But don’t worry – meal planning doesn’t have to be complicated. With a few easy steps and my free meal planning bundle, you’ll soon be saving time, money, and your sanity. Let’s get started!
What is Meal Planning?
Meal planning is deciding in advance what you’ll eat on a specific day, week, or month. It helps you stick to a healthy diet, get the nutrients you need, and save money by only buying what you need, reducing food waste.
Why Meal Planning Works (and why you need it)
Here are some of the many benefits of meal planning…
Saves Time
Meal planning eliminates the (often last-minute) daily decision-making around meals and streamlines your grocery shopping into just one or two shops per week. No more daily trips to pick up ingredients on the way home from work when you’re starving!
Instead, you’ll be able to think ahead, prep ingredients in advance, and make the cooking process quicker and more efficient. I save even more time by having my weekly grocery shop delivered to my door. (I will share below how I do this for very little extra cost.)
Saves Money
With fewer shopping trips, the chance of unnecessary impulse purchases is reduced. Meal planning can help you stick to a budget by taking inventory of what you already have before buying only what you need. Online grocery shopping can further assist you with this, as you can see your spending as you add things to your basket. Anything that isn’t urgent can be deleted to bring costs down.
Reduces Food Waste
Meal planning ensures you buy only the necessary ingredients and use up what’s already stocked in your kitchen, fridge or freezer before they spoil.
Fewer Takeaways
When you take the time to plan, you’re more likely to have everything you need on hand and know in advance what you’re going to make. This reduces the temptation to order takeaway because you’ll already have quick, healthy meals you can easily make at home.
Healthier Eating
Meal planning allows you to intentionally choose balanced meals you will enjoy cooking and eating. This way, you avoid last-minute unhealthy choices and ensure you have nutritious ingredients readily available.
Better Time Management
With less daily meal prep stress and a simpler grocery shopping routine, you can plan quick and easy meals that fit your schedule. You will have more time and energy to focus on work and family without the dinner-time scramble and unnecessary trips to the supermarket.
Mental Clarity
When you meal plan, you reduce the daily mental load of deciding what to cook and what to buy, alleviating the stress of last-minute meals and bringing a sense of control and order to your week.
With so many benefits to meal planning, it’s a no-brainer if you want to start nailing it in the kitchen and feel more organised and on top of things once again. I promise once you get started and try it for yourself, you’ll never look back! The suggestions below are based on what I do and what I have found to be most helpful when planning dinners. That’s as far as I go with it personally, but you can easily use the same process to prepare for any meal of the day or on-the-go lunches.
10 Simple steps to meal planning made easy
1. Look at Your Schedule: Planning Around Your Life
The first step to successful meal planning has nothing to do with meals – it starts with planning your week and checking your schedule. No matter how well you plan your meals, it won’t work if you don’t align them with your family’s activities. For example, my husband works shifts, which can make meal planning tricky, but it also makes it essential! By looking at our schedule first, I can plan quick dinners for busy nights, make ahead meals for when he’s working late, and use slower days for batch cooking. This way, our family stays organised, well-fed, and stress-free throughout the week.
I recommend taking 5-10 minutes on a Sunday to look at the upcoming week and plan your schedule on paper. That way, you’ll know what’s happening around dinner time each day, and you can plan your meals accordingly. I use a weekly planner pad with tear-off pages that lives in the kitchen. We all add to it if we have things on, and it means we can see who’s working when and what’s generally happening on any given day.
2. Create a ‘Favourites’ List: Go-To Meals Everyone Loves
This is a very important initial step you don’t want to skip! Having a list of ‘Family Favourites’ makes planning faster and easier when you’re tired, lacking in inspiration and stuck for ideas. It’s easy to do. Simply ask each member of your family what their absolute favourite meals are. Remind them of the meals that YOU love to cook and see if they are mutually appreciated! Create a list of tried-and-true recipes that the whole family enjoys. It can start small and be added to over time. It will be a lifesaver when you can’t think what to make.
3. Take Inventory: What’s Already in Your Kitchen?
Each time you create your meal plan, check what you’ve already got in your fridge, freezer, and pantry before you start thinking about what you might make. Do a quick inventory to ensure you use up ingredients before they spoil or expire, and also help you reduce waste and save money. Get right to the back of your cupboards and have a rummage in the bottom of your freezer. Start using up those things that have been long forgotten about. This is a great time to add to your shopping list if you notice you are running out of something you use often.
Bonus Tip #1 It goes without saying that taking inventory will be easier if your kitchen is tidy and organised. Regularly editing and decluttering your food cupboards, fridge, and freezer keeps stock under control and everything visible and easy to access. A tidy kitchen not only saves time when cooking and meal planning but is easier to clean up afterwards. Plus, having everything neatly arranged makes the whole cooking process feel more enjoyable and efficient!
Get my advice on organising your kitchen cupboards HERE.
4. Create Your Meal Plan: Start Small and Build Up
If you are new to meal planning, I recommend starting with a plan for just 3 days or up to 1 week to see how it goes. Once you get the hang of it and get into your groove, you can gradually extend to 2, 3, or even 4 weeks at a time. You can even plan just weekdays at first and then add weekend dinners when you feel ready. Do what’s right for you and remember, it’s okay to keep it simple – focus on meals that are easy to prepare and quick to make.
You don’t need anything fancy to plan your meals, a simple notepad or piece of paper divided into the days of the week will do. A weekly planner pad like the one I already mentioned often has enough space to add your meals too. Check your schedule for the days you’re planning and use your ‘favourites list’ for inspiration. You don’t need to spend time adding extra details to your meal plan, simply write the name of the meal. For example:
Mon – Veggie pizza & salad
Tue – Sweet & sour chicken
Wed – Lasagne
Bonus tip #2 If you want to create more structure around meal planning and ensure you are eating a varied, healthy diet, you can assign each day of the week to a different type of food or meal. This creates a ‘formula’ or ‘system’ that makes it even easier to plan meals in advance. Once you’ve worked out the best structure for you and your household and practised it for a while, it will become automatic and you won’t need to think about it anymore. This will look different for everyone but here’s an example to illustrate:
Meat-free Monday
Chicken Tuesday
Pasta Wednesday
Thursday Stir Fry
Fish Friday
Slow Cooker Saturday
Sunday Roast
5. Share the Plan: Get Your Family Involved
If you keep the meal plan where other household members can see it, it means anyone who’s able (highly recommend training your family up!) can go ahead and prepare the meal if they arrive home before you! This has happened in our home as the children have grown, and things have evolved over the years. I am lucky to have a husband who enjoys cooking and I often get to come home from a busy day to a dinner already prepared. The beauty of meal planning in action! I did the initial work, but it means he can execute it with ease! Maybe this could work in your home, too?
6. Make Your Shopping List as You Plan: And Don’t Leave Home Without It!
Create your shopping list based on your meal plan. As you decide on each meal, check the recipe and ingredients you’ll need and add them to the list. Remember to check your fridge/freezer and pantry/store cupboards first to avoid buying duplicates. Consider a different recipe altogether if the ingredients list is extensive or requires unusual store cupboard ingredients you’re not likely to use again. Otherwise, they will just end up cluttering up your kitchen cupboards.
Above all, trust the list and stick to it to avoid impulse buys and storing multiples of things you don’t need yet. You can do it the old-fashioned way with paper and pen or use a shopping list app on your phone.
Bonus tip #3 The 21st-century way to create your shopping list! If your home has an Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant smart home device, use it to its best advantage and ensure you place one in your kitchen. Why? Because there is a shopping list feature on these devices!!! It’s amazing! As you plan your meals or use things up, simply ask the device to add what you need to the shopping list. In our house, it goes something like this…
“Alexa, add carrots to the shopping list, please.”
In your house, it might sound something like this…
“Hey Google, add carrots to the shopping list, please.”
This has been a game-changer for us. I haven’t written a paper shopping list for years. I just have my phone out when I’m in the supermarket or doing my online grocery order at home and check it off as I pop each item in the basket. The beauty of this is that I don’t have sole responsibility for the grocery shopping. The same list is on both our phones as we are connected on the app. If either of us need to go to the supermarket for anything, we can bring up the list and get the things we need. No phone call or text required!
To set this up, all you need to do is install the relevant Alexa or Google app on your mobile phone and enable the shopping list feature. Train everyone in your family to ask the device to add the things you need to buy as and when necessary. My boys have had fun with this over the years and have randomly added things like ‘a new brother’, ‘tonnes of sweets’ and ‘a kilo of chocolate’. I can tell you it really brought a smile to my face when I was shopping! And no, they didn’t get what they’d asked for!
7. Consider Online Grocery Shopping: Save Yourself Time and Money
Online grocery shopping is a fantastic way to plan and save both time and money, especially for busy families. I save on delivery costs by paying upfront for the year and opting for the most cost-effective plan – each weekly delivery works out at only 99p, which I feel is well worth it for the time, effort and money saved. Shopping online keeps me away from the temptations of in-store browsing, helping me avoid buying things I don’t really need.
Online grocery shopping makes it easier to stick to your budget because you can keep an eye on your basket total and remove non-essential items before checkout. To keep your ordering routine running like clockwork, try to choose the same (or similar) delivery time each week and place your order a few days in advance to secure your preferred slot.
This method gently ‘forces’ you to be organised, plus the convenience of saved ‘favourites’ and ‘usuals’ on the platform means I can complete my order in as little as 5-10 minutes.
Ordering every Thursday for a Sunday delivery works perfectly for us. It might take some trial and error to find the best system for you and your family, but once you do, it’s incredibly freeing. As a family of four adults, we often find that a weekly shop doesn’t quite cover us for fresh fruit and perishables, so I do a small in-store top-up shop on Thursdays to tide us over until the next delivery. With a bit of planning, you can create a system that works for your household, saving valuable time and making life feel a little less hectic.
No more spending way too much money on daily trips to the supermarket for ‘essentials’! If you’ve ever stopped off for milk on the way home from work and come out with a new jumper, a pair of slippers and a scented candle, you know what I’m talking about!
8. Recipe Box Delivery Services: Great For Couples and Very Busy People
Recipe delivery box services such as Gousto and Hello Fresh, simplify meal planning and keep you organised in the kitchen. They provide pre-portioned fresh ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes (you choose in advance), saving you time on meal prep and decision-making when you’re busy with other commitments. However, they might not be for everyone, especially if you’re on a tight budget, as they can become quite costly once the initial sign-up discounts expire.
Remember these services are usually subscription-based, and you have to physically go to the settings to amend, pause or cancel if you want to make changes or opt out. We tried Gousto for a few months, and we loved it. It was fun getting the kids involved with choosing recipes and cooking the meals, but it became a bit too expensive for us to continue once the discounted period was over. I can see it being a treat for us in the future once the kids have flown the nest!
9. Prep What You Can in Advance: A Time-Saving Tip
Prepping ingredients ahead of time, like chopping veggies or marinating meats, cuts down on cooking time later in the day. It makes it quicker and easier to assemble meals and ensures you have everything ready to go when it’s time to cook. This can also be done with salads and on-the-go lunches.
A slow cooker is another way to prep in advance and create healthy, home-cooked meals with minimum effort. It’s a busy person’s best friend, quietly working its magic and cooking meals while you tackle other tasks. I love my slow cooker and use it regularly for one-pot dishes and melt-in-the-mouth joints of meat and poultry.
Batch cooking or doubling recipes is also a great idea, as it means you only prep and cook once but eat multiple times! It saves you time and takes very little effort to put a meal on the table on busy days. Having a homemade meal waiting in the freezer, when you’re ill or short on time or energy, is a very welcome and comforting feeling.
10. Be Flexible: Adjust as You Go
No matter how organised you are, life happens and has a habit of getting in the way sometimes. It’s perfectly okay if your meal plan doesn’t always go as planned. Unexpected events, changes in schedules, or just a craving for something different are all normal. The key is to stay flexible, adjust as needed, and not be too hard on yourself – meal planning is meant to make life easier, not add stress. Remember, every week is a fresh start!
Turn chaos into calm and transform dinner decisions into delicious routines.
Meal planning doesn’t have to be daunting, and don’t worry if it doesn’t feel easy straight away. After a bit of trial and error, you’ll get there. Start small, build up gradually, and before you know it, you’ll have more time, less stress, and a bit more calm in your life. Ready to give it a go? I have created a free meal planning bundle to help you get started on the right foot – you’ll soon be acing it, one meal at a time!
Click here to download your free Meal Planning Bundle and take the first step towards a more organised, stress-free kitchen! Print it as you need it, or make it a resource you can use and reuse time and time again by laminating and using a dry wipe pen.
For more on how to organise your household, take a look at my blog HERE.
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