Lessons in Meal Planning

Up front, I want to qualify this post by admitting that I am no expert on Meal Planning.  I have learned things as time has passed, I have learned what seems to work in our house and what doesn’t.  There are going to be things that work for me and the Johnson’s that won’t work for your household.  It’s definitely an experiment.  We’ve started doing something a bit different for February and so I thought I’d share what I know about meal planning.

The Past:

When I first started meal planning, it was so that I could plan all my meals for an entire day.  I was on Weight Watchers, so I needed to be able to budget my points throughout the day.  Meal planning was the best way I could do this.  Once I stopped Weight Watchers, I had become so addicted to the “plan” that I’ve not stopped for very long. 

During this time, I planned for 6-7 meals for the week.  So this included one meal for every day of the week.  It might end up being lunch on Sunday, but at least we planned for one cooked meal each day.

Meal planning provided me an easy grocery list.  It’s as simple as that.  If I know what we’re going to eat, I know what to shop for, which makes that two hour weekly routine easier.  With a toddler in tow, that makes a BIG difference. 

I would only plan one week at a time until the last couple of months.  I simply looked at our calendars to see what’s going on for the week, find out if we’ve got stuff going on during the evenings, and plan around those events.  If there was a night where we would eat out, I’d plan for that, if we had time for a quick meal, we planned for that.  It wasn’t so bad.  Then…. I realized what a two week plan could do for me!  We budgeted our grocery dollars on a two week basis, so why not budget our meals on a two week basis?  I could buy everything except the “fresh” foods (produce, milk, etc) for two weeks at a time!  That made week 2 of grocery shopping even easier.  I had a much shorter list, and it took less time.  Did the week 1 shopping trip take longer?  Yes, I’ll admit, it does take a bit longer, but I’m talking like 15 minutes, NOT an additional hour or two that you might think. 

The Present:

Recently – starting at the beginning of February this year, I decided that I wanted to go BIGGER.  I wanted to plan for a month or more in advance.    Was it difficult?  It was at first.  But then I stepped back and looked at the calendar.  There were 28 days in February.  I knew I could think of 28 unique meals that we could mix up and have each day/night.  But then, I stopped and changed things again.  I didn’t want to plan for 28 days.  I wanted to plan for Monday – Friday only.  The reason?  When I was planning for a meal every single day, we wouldn’t end up doing it.  We’d eat out sometimes, we’d cheat and have cereal instead of cooking, we’d find something else to make other than the plan, etc.  So I decided, 5 out of 7 days would have to work for us.  And so far?  It has.

So – I made a list of all of the meals that we regularly make.  Between my list and ones that hubby came up with, we had 30 meals.  Almost enough for an entire months’ worth of every day meals!  I’m sure if I really thought about it, I could come up with some more, but I haven’t needed to yet. 

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Then I printed some blank calendars, and I started jotting down meals for each week night.   I made sure to keep in mind our schedule, as well as wanting to keep the meal plan full of variety.  Here’s February’s meal plan:

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Shopping.  I go through two week menu – right down everything I need for each meal, and then I go through the house, mark off the stuff I already have, and use that as my shopping list.  Of course, I still do not buy the “fresh” foods for week two, I wait until the weekend in between, but that shopping list is much shorter!  And, so far, you know what???  Our grocery bill has gone DOWN.  Ever since we started shopping for two weeks at a time, we have left over money in our budget because our grocery bill has been less.  Now, don’t get me wrong, we usually end up spending it on things we don’t “need” like fun foods from Costco, but still, it’s money we could be saving if we were that smart! :)

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The Future:

As Cooper (and Katy) get older, I plan to incorporate them into the meal planning process.  I want to give them the opportunity to choose one meal apiece per week.  This way, we’ll know that they’ll eat that meal.  We may do two meals each if it all works out, but that is my one plan for the future.  I don’t think Cooper is quite ready for that yet, but in the next year or so, I plan to get him into the process.  We’ll see how that goes!

So, I think that’s it.  That’s my meal planning steps.  It sure helped me when I was doing Weight Watchers, and I know I don’t want to live life without a meal plan anymore!  It really helps and keeps us on a good schedule.  Do we ALWAYS stick to the plan?  No, this week for instance, we had a change in our schedule yesterday, so the Stuffed Buffalo Chicken Shells were not made.  Since Hubby bought me a waffle maker for Valentine’s day, we may be having waffles for dinner tonight instead of Stirfry.  We’ll see how it goes.  I know we’ll have those stuffed shells this weekend, and Stirfry can be saved because everything is frozen or packaged and not “fresh.”  Yay for that.

Do you meal plan?  Do you find it helps your life?  Tell me, share your ideas!

Oh, and don’t forget to enter my GIVEAWAY – going on until Saturday night!