Simple Family Meal Planning

I’m often asked how I free up time from those normal day to day parental duties. As a working, homeschooling mother of 6, I’ve had to find ways to simplify my life…preparing for and cooking meals was one of those things that took up so much of my time. Having a solid meal planning and organized shopping list system in place has been incredible for so many reasons.

• I can feed my family of 8 with minimal stress and brainpower. It has just about cut out all of the stress around cooking for my family. 
• I don’t waste food & I spend so much less money because only buy what I need.
• I can form a grocery shopping list in minutes. 
• I spend so much less time and energy before every meal trying to piece together ingredients to form a cohesive plan to quickly feed a lot of hungry mouths.
• Rotate meals so that we don’t get tired of eating something too much or forget about a delicious meal that we hadn’t had in a long time. 
• And it gives my kids the ability to participate and choose meals that they like. Everyone gets to be part of the process. 

It’s so simple to implement from choosing the meals from a list of ‘family approved’ meals, assigning them to each to a day, copying the exact ingredients needed for each meal to a grocery shopping list, and then you’re done for the week. 

Here’s how I’ve set mine up:

1. I have compiled a list of all of the meals that the whole family enjoys – They may not be everyone’s favorite, but they’re all keepers. Before I add a new meal to our Family Meal List, I ask everyone if it’s worthy of adding to the list. Over the years, we’ve compiled quite a few. I have this list saved on my computer and every weekend I print it out and everyone gets to circle 1 favorite for the week. I choose. the rest with what is healthy and what I feel like cooking, rotating them as I see fit. The kids love that they have input and get at least one favorite every week.
2. After we’ve all chosen, I have a file saved on my computer for each meal,  with a list of all of the ingredients for that recipe, and the recipe itself if I need it. I copy and paste the ingredient list for each to a new document and that ends up being my shopping list for that week. So easy – no thinking – all the ingredients are on the list in the exact quantity that I need.
3. I assign those meal to a day and a meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) which I write on a board on our pantry door for everyone to see. I usually set meals that require ingredients that go bad the quickest earlier in the week and I strategically space out meals that may have too similar of ingredients so that we diversify our nutrients. That’s really all of the thinking that needs to happen through this whole process, unless I feel like adding in a new recipe for everyone to try.

I can wake up each morning and already know what’s on the menu,  I already have all of the ingredients so I can plan ahead in the day so that I can spread out the cooking or baking at convenient times, while the baby is napping or have something in the oven while we’re homeschooling. 

This simple process cuts out so much time and mental energy preparing to feed my large healthy meals all week, though I’m sure it’s just as helpful for a small family as well. Saving money, time, wasting less food… I love being creative but piecing together 3 meals every day from random ingredients in the fridge and pantry is not something that I have time for, especially when I have 7 hungry people waiting on me. 

I hope this helps if you wanted to simplify a necessary process in order to free up time to do more important things.