Meal Planning Week-by-Week

Meal planning. It seems like there are million and one ways to do it. I've tried to plan by month, by paycheck (2 weeks at at a time), and by flying by the seat of my pants. I don't recommend the latter.

I've found that I need to have a plan, but trying to plan too much at once puts my brain into overload. I plan for 3 meals: a weekly breakfast item, school lunches, and dinner. I do this every Thursday morning for the following week.

The first thing I do is dig out my big list of meal ideas, which keeps my planning time to a minimum. I don't have to think too much about what meals we've had in the past that we love, or which meals I haven't cooked in awhile. Do you see a pattern here? I don't want to put a lot of energy into this, so I make it as easy as possible.

Next, I look through my idea list and write each dinner (including "eating out" days) on my Erin Condren weekly schedule pad.  The weekly schedule goes right on the refrigerator, so everyone can see the week's events and no one asks me "What's for dinner?" every. single. night.  I also write it in my Erin Condren life planner so it's easily accessible if I head to the grocery store on a whim. I'm basically obsessed with all things Erin Condren. Is that obvious?

Then, I figure out what breakfast item I'm going to make for the week and write that in on Sunday. I'll usually make something like egg casserole bites, fruity oatmeal bake, or whole wheat muffins on Sunday for breakfast, and then freeze whatever is left. We always have a quick and healthy breakfast ready to go for us on busy weekday mornings.

Lastly, I plan Speedy's school lunch. I honestly just write it on a piece of notebook paper and tape it to the inside of a cupboard. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. I write out everything he should have in his lunchbox for each day, that way the hubs knows exactly what should go in the lunchbox if he ends up doing it some random morning. On a side note, he really appreciates this because he tends to get frustrated with packing lunches. :)

Sometimes I will make my grocery list right after I finish planning, but most of the time I make the list on Friday. Shopping happens on Saturday or Sunday- depending on our schedule for the weekend.

Do you have any meal planning tips? If so, we would love you to share them! 

*As a side note, this post is not sponsored at all by Erin Condren. I'm really just this obsessed with her stuff and I use it for everything!