About a month or so ago I shared of photo of my meal plan/grocery list on my Instagram story and I had a lot people asking me how I put it together and how I keep it all organized, so here I am to show you! This is the perfect time with the new year starting to get more organized and this will save you so much time during the week and also while you’re grocery shopping. Let me start by saying that it’s taken me a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to organize meals for my family while also keeping a budget, so don’t be surprised if it takes you a few times to figure out what works for your family. Ok, let’s jump in!
First thing I do is pick out what we’ll have for dinner. Dinner always seems to be the most time consuming meal of the day (especially with a toddler running around trying to “help”) so I like to choose the meals ahead of time so I don’t have to think about it during the week. I go through my Pinterest boards of dinner favorites and I also like to look at other apps like Tasty or Yummly for new recipes to try. I usually pick between 4-5 dinner meals depending on what we have going on during the week. I don’t choose 7 meals because I know we’ll probably go out to dinner a night or two and we’ll probably have left overs for a night or two so there’s no point in buying all the food for 7 meals and having it go to waste. Once I pick the meals I write them at the top of my list, I personally don’t choose which meal we will have on each specific day because I don’t know what I or my husband might be in the mood for that particular day.
After I have all my meals picked out, I pull up all the recipes and start adding the items I don’t have to my list. If you have your recipes on your phone, ipad or laptop it helps to go into the kitchen while you make your list that way you can see what you have and don’t have. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been thinking, “oh I need that” and adding it to my list and later realizing that I did have it, what a waste! I organize my list by categories, I do this to save me time at the grocery store because like I said before, toddlers! I’m not super crazy with the categories but I do try to keep in mind where things are located at the grocery store in hopes that I only have to go down each aisle once. Anyone out there who’s that shopper that goes from one end of the store to the other and back again like five times?? Well that’s me without my list…
Once I get done with dinner I move on the breakfast, lunches, and snacks. We keep things pretty simple with breakfast, usually a mixture of eggs, cereal, oatmeal and pancakes. For lunch we usually trade off between a couple things ranging from sandwiches, salads, burrito bowls, pretty much whatever we’re in the mood for that week but I’ll try to narrow it down to two things just to make things easy because I know we’ll go out to lunch a couple times and probably have left overs some days. After that I’ll jot down some snacks that I’ll need to pick up, mostly for my daughter Sky, things I know shes run out of.
Last thing I’ll do is add the necessities to my list, the things I have to buy almost every week like milk, eggs, bread, or treats that I might be craving that week because hello, preggers problems! Once my plan and my list is complete I’ll head to the store, I usually do my shopping Mondays when my husband gets off work because #teamwork.
I hope that this has been helpful to those of you that dread the thought of meal planning, or that find themselves eating out way to often because they don’t have anything planned.
I have attached a free printable of a super simple meal plan and grocery list to get you started! If you use it, tag me on Instagram with @featherssky, I’d love to see what meals you have planned for your family this week 🙂
Click link to download —> Meal Plan & Grocery List