Is planning what is for dinner a struggle in your household? I know it can be in mine. Download these free printables and follow this simple to follow guide for meal planning. Taking the guesswork out of your dinner routine will surely help your evening go much more smoothly!
Hey, y'all! I have a feeling your life is just as hectic and crazy as mine is so I wanted to share with you my meal planning routine. Why? Because nothing sucks more than coming home and realizing you don't have dinner planned out. Trust me, after working a 12 hour day the last thing I want to do is forage through the refrigerator trying to figure out what dish I can piecemeal together. In order to simply things, I sit down each Sunday and figure out what we'll be having throughout the week. My process is pretty simple, and has proven to be extremely beneficial for me throughout the week.
Step One: Pinterest
Okay, so like most human beings, throughout the week I play around on Pinterest when I'm bored. I have a secret board where I pin the recipes I plan on using throughout the week. I use the ** sign at the beginning of the board name so the board is the first one that appears in my list of boards to save on.
I also have a ton of other food boards that I save other interesting recipes to. If I need to come up with an idea, I check out one of those boards and move to the pin to the board called **This Weeks Recipes** so it is front and center for when I sit down to meal plan on Sunday.
Once we've tried a new recipe and determined we love it, I move the pin over to a final board where I store all of our favorite recipes. This may sound time consuming to move the pins around but really it all happens within a couple of clicks.
Step Two: Planning out the Meals
When Sunday rolls around, I check out my **This Weeks Recipes** private board and pull up all of the pins I've collected throughout the week. I also go through my website to pull recipes for the week.
I print out a copy of my Meal Planning Sheet and pencil the food items into the organizer. I use pencil so I can erase things and switch them around as needed because let's face it, things happen.
As I check out each of the posts, I jot down what groceries I need to prepare them. A bulk of my shopping is done on the outside of the store: produce, meats and dairy so my grocery list centers around these areas. Any other additional items such as pasta, tortilla, etc get added to my miscellaneous section.
I have two different templates that I use. I alternate between the one above and the one below. The first organizer has more space for groceries whereas the second has all of the information on one page. Please feel free to click on whichever option you prefer and download it for free. I have a feeling you're going to find these organizers super useful! I know they have made my life much easier!
Regardless of which planner I use, I group my groceries together by where I would find them in the store to make shopping easier!
Step Three: The Night Before
I hang my organizer on my refrigerator so I can refer to it throughout the week. Each night, I look at the menu to determine what meats I need to pull out for the next day. I go ahead and lay those out to defrost.
I also take this time to pack my lunch for the next day. This helps make my morning routine go much smoother, as well.
