There’s a clear difference in what our family eats when I meal plan versus when I don’t!
There’s also a clear difference in the grocery bill when I plan versus when I don’t!
If you’re wanting to eat healthier and spend less, meal planning is for you! Here’s how I do it!
Family schedule
The first thing I do is look at our family calendar for the week to see if we have anything planned during the evenings. If we need to be somewhere in the evening or won’t be home until later than usual then that’s going to change my plan.
Then I look at my work schedule to see when I’m anticipating being home each day. This helps me decide how much time I’ll have to cook or if my husband needs to cook.
Here is an example of this week’s meal plan!
Inventory
Something I like to do to help me not waste food and to keep my shopping trips low cost is to keep an inventory of what foods we have.
This is especially helpful for frozen food because our deep freezer is in the garage so I don’t always want to go outside to look at what we have. I do also keep a list of what is in my pantry. Both are great for if I’m at the store and can’t remember what we have at home!
I just keep a running list in my notes app on my phone and once I do my plan for the week I remove anything we are going to use.
Put it all together!
After looking all all of that I browse my recipes or Pinterest for something new and put it all together!
Once I have a list of the recipes and meals we are going to have I check my inventory and make a grocery list for things we need. And of course add in our weekly staples like milk, bread, and fruit.
Now the final piece is to write down this meal plan!!! I use this dry erase weekly calendar which I mounted onto the wall next to my fridge. This is a central location in our home where my husband and I can both see it easily. This helps us to remember to thaw out meat the night prior so it’s ready to go for cooking each day!