Oh meal planning... how much I love you and how much I really don't like you!
I love meal planning because it takes a decision off my plate from my day to day life. And having a plan also helps to keep us eating at home instead of running though a drive thru for convenience. So for those reasons, I try to make sure I am keeping up with meal planning.
But why is it so hard?! 😂😢ðŸ˜
So today I'm sharing what we use to try and make meal planning successful. I'm sharing what I use to make planning easier (keep reading for a free download!) and my top tip for making busy nights easier. So let's get started!
Tip for Making Planning Easier:
The most success I have ever had with meal planning is using themed nights. It helps make your list of meal ideas smaller to choose from while still providing a nice variety of meals in your overall diet. So for example two of our categories are Meatless Monday and Taco Tuesday. So instead having a whole cookbook to look through for Monday I have a short list of meatless meals that I can grab a meal from and stick in my meal plan. And same for Tuesday night. I'm only pulling from my Mexican section. It keeps us from getting overwhelmed with choices and avoid decision paralysis.
I have recently revamped our weekly meal scheduled. I now have two different weeks to help add a little more variety to our weekly meals. I have also added themes for our lunches! I don't know why I didn't think of that before! I will share our themed meals here and I have both my printout as well as a blank printout for you to download for free below!
Themed Nights Week One:
Whole Chicken Monday (roast a whole chicken and use the left over throughout the week)
Taco Tuesday
Shredded Chicken Wednesday
Asian Thursday (Chinese or India are our picks)
Frozen Friday (frozen pizza or frozen meals I make - more below)
Southern Saturday
Something Simple Sunday (this night can be leftovers, quick and easy meals, or eating out)
Themed Nights Week 2:
Meatless Monday
Rice Meal Tuesday
Whatever Wednesday
Pasta Thursday
Frozen Friday
Try-it Saturday (these are new recipes we try out to add into our categories)
Something Simple Sunday
Themed Lunches:
Picnic Lunch Monday
Soup or Sandwich Tuesday
Wacky Macky Wednesday (anything from Mac-n-cheese to tortellini)
American Thursday
Food Art Friday

Tips for Making Busy Nights Easier:
We don't have crazy nights like we use to in the days before the P word, but I still love making freezer meals to make some nights easier. The easiest way I have found to do this is to double my recipes when I'm cooking throughout our week and freezing the extra servings for another week. This method means that I'm not spending a whole day in the kitchen to prep, or making another mess in my kitchen. When I double the recipe I'm not really adding to my overall work load. I'm only having to clean my kitchen once instead of twice. So it's the best way I've found to fill my freezer without spending a bunch of "extra" time in my kitchen.
Then I have meals ready to go in my freezer for nights that I don't feel like cooking or we have something on the calendar. I can just pop these meals in my freezer and not have to worry about spending time in the kitchen cooking or cleaning. And check your oven settings! Especially if you have a newer oven. My oven has a setting where I can tell it to turn on at a specific time and cook for a set time and then turn itself off. So I would put my frozen meal in the oven, set my oven to do the cooking, and when we got home our dinner was ready and waiting! It was really great since we were getting home around 7:30 at night sometimes.
If you would like to hear more about how we meal plan watch the video below:
Do you meal plan? What are your best meal planning tips and tricks? I'd love to hear them down in the comments!
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