Household Systems ~ Meal Planning

Happy Friday, friends! This week seems to have flown by, and I’m not complaining ;)

I’m almost all done getting the organizational part of our “Systems and Planning” goals in place.

Next up on list: Meal Planning!

I love to cook {HATE to grocery shop, go figure} and having our dinners as a family is very important to me. I grew up with my mom cooking delicious meals almost every night, hanging in the kitchen and finishing homework or talking about my day while she cooked, and sitting together no matter how late basketball practice went. It is a very ingrained memory of my childhood. So I try hard to have a variety of nutritious meals most everyone in my family likes and eat as a family. But that isn’t an easy task if I’m flying by the seat of my pants and it’s 4:15pm, my kids are raiding the pantry, I’m getting the horrible hungries and I’m kind of over the afternoon.

Our need for meal planning is a very real one. We have a busy household and it’s good to have a plan, we tend to waste more food when we don’t have a plan or we spend money on quick meals out that aren’t that great. One of my favorite things in the world is going out to dinner, but spending hundreds throughout the year at Subway when I could have made a decent meal for a third of the price if I had planned a bit…well, I’d rather we spent our money elsewhere.

I have to admit, I had an elaborate plan for meal planning that I came up with about 3 years ago. A white board to make a calendar and magnetic printer paper to print out our meal options. That white board is still sitting unopened in my pantry. Should probably take my own advice and donate that thing.

I’m seeing a theme here setting up these systems that simpler is better for me!!! So I simplified my approach and just made a list of our favorite meals. I can add to it when we’ve tried something and it’s a hit. No meal on this list is too elaborate or time consuming. Some are even frozen meals from Costco! I now have a place where I can write down that recipe I tried that everyone liked and not forget about it when we need something new in the rotation. I also made a blank list for recipes to try and I figure I can write down the cook book and page number or the website where I found it so it’s easy to find again. I also started a Pinterest board for meal ideas.

{I just got this cookbook as a gift and I can’t wait to try it out!}

I tear out recipes that look yummy when I come across them in magazines and I have a ton of recipes to try. I went through them all and grouped the ones I kept with some dividers with folders.

A while back I picked up two plastic covered binders at Target. I wanted them all plastic so if I had them out on the counter while I was cooking, I could easily clean them up if they got messy. I put the recipes in page protectors and added my Go-To Meal list and my To-Try list at the front.

{still have to label those dividers and binder spines}

The second binder is just to replace an older binder so they match :) A few years ago for a present, my mom typed up all the recipes that she made while I was growing up, family recipes and recipes from dear friends she had collected over the years. I love that binder, and haven’t really made nearly as much out of their as I should. What a great gift that would make for a child getting married or starting a family: A book of family recipes! If you’re like our family, and food is one of your love languages, you’ll have a pretty impressive gift to give ;)

I also went through our cookbooks and kept the ones I use regularly. I figured if I hadn’t made a meal out of one of them in 13+ years of marriage, I probably wasn’t going to and it got donated.

A few years ago I purchased a meal planning/shopping list printable from iHeart Organizing’s shop {mine is a bit different} and I just print those off when I need them. I have also printed out the week or month calendar from my computer before and filled that out too. I think whatever works for you, works. I’ve been making a sorry attempt at meal planning for some time, but I know that when I actually sit down and take 30 minutes {less if I’m just going with tried and true recipes} or so to look through our upcoming week and plan, everything goes so much more smoothly!

I love, love making a meal for my family that they all enjoy. It really makes me so happy. Most nights at least one of them complains and whines about the meal, but as they get older, it’s getting a bit better. And those whines and complains won’t stop me from finding easy, yummy recipes that they’ll love. It may be silly, but I really want my kids to have memories of their favorite meals around our family table, so when they come home from college or visit us with their family years from now, those meals are on their request list and make them feel like they’re home.