Menu planning is a life saver for me. I literally couldn’t cook dinner or grocery shop without doing a menu plan for the week. When I’m cooking dinner, I like having a list of meals to choose from each day of the week and knowing that I have the ingredients in the house to make those meals.

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Some people plan out what they are having for dinner each day that week. I like having a little more freedom than that. Sometimes our schedule changes during the week and one night I might need a faster, easier meal to make. You can do what works best for you and your family.

Tips and tricks for weekly meal planning

I’ve also learned a couple of tricks to make meal planning even easier. I used to spend hours browsing through my recipe books and Pinterest, trying to get inspired and find recipes to add to my menu list for the week. It worked, but it was very time consuming and I was starting to dread meal planning. So I decided to create a list of meals that included our favorites to eat, ones I liked to cook and ones that we didn’t mind including in the meal rotation.

My list of our favorite dinner meals

I keep track of our favorite meals and the dates we eat them

To make menu planning easier, I came up with a list of about 25 of our favorite dinner meals. I keep this list in the notes app on my phone. Whenever I make a certain meal, I put the date we ate it next to the recipe name. I keep the dates for the last few times that we had that meal. So when I’m making my weekly menu plan, I can see that it’s been a month since we had that meal so it’s ok to add it to the menu for this week.

I will still browse through my recipe books or Pinterest every once in a while for some new inspiration, but I like having a list of meals to choose from. And if we like the new recipe that I try, it goes on my meal list.

How often should you make a meal plan?

I do my meal plan once a week. You can do the same, or do it for every two weeks, or once a month. I start by making a list of meals to cook for dinner that week. Once I’ve done that, I add the ingredients I need to buy to my grocery list. This also helps in going to the store less often during the week.

I usually like to get all of my grocery shopping done it one day. This includes most of the grocery items that we buy and eat during the week. So unless we unexpectedly run out of something or crave a certain snack, I usually only go to the store once a week. That definitely helps save money in the grocery budget.

Meal planning can make your life easier

See how menu planning can change your life? It takes a little time and work at first, but then you will find the rest of your week a lot less stressful. No more wracking your brain to try to figure out what to make for dinner last minute. You can customize your plan to what works best for you by making lists or doing it in a calendar format. You can even create a menu board in your kitchen so everyone can see what’s for dinner.

Tools to help you start meal planning (affiliate links):

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