My Time-Saving Meal Planner

October 1, 2013 / Nutrition / Source: Nutrition

Meal planning is SO important if you want to eat healthy, but unfortunately it is not always easy to do.  Do you struggle to figure out how to plan your weekly meals for your family…and wish you had a little help?  If your life is busy like mine you probably find it hard to take time to plan out your meals for each week…let alone for a month.  Fortunately, after seeing a cute idea on Pinterest I came up with an easy way to plan out my weekly meals that involves the whole family.  I would have loved to use the idea that I found on Pinterest, but it would have taken too much time to put together and I would have had to find a special place on a wall to hang it up.  The system that I developed is not only simple to use, but it is simple to put together and you can gradually add to it every week.  Plus, it doesn’t take up a lot of space and it is easy to store.

The first thing that I did was to purchase a mini binder, dividers, business card holder page protectors, and a sealable binder envelope to use to store all of the meal options in.  Plus, I used some self-printable business cards that I had on hand.  Then, I started by picking my favorite meals…and meals that I planned to use the next week and typed out the name of the meal on one side of the card and the items needed on the back side (sorry, forgot to include that in the picture).  Next, as you can see, I wrote out the days of the week and included the meal for that day next to it.  Additional meals were then stored in the back and will all eventually be separated by categories (e.g., meatless, vegan, chicken).

Once I had my planner all set up, I allowed my family to start choosing a favorite meal or two that they would like for the following week.  Then, they added their choices to the sealable envelope and I determined which day it would work best on. (Note:  This meal planner could be done without the sealable envelope, but you will just need to figure out where your family should place their meal choices.)  Lastly, since the recipes are not included on the cards (which would take MUCH longer) you can either note where to find the recipe on the back of the card or you can include a recipe card in the front of the binder (like shown in the picture).

Happy meal planning! :)