Today I want to share with you how I approach meal planning and why this system works for me. I have been planning our meals this way for at least five years and I know it has been a big money-/time-/stress-saver for our family. Take it or leave it, I’m just putting it out there in case it helps you like it’s helped me.
Disclaimer: I feel obliged to tell you that I hate meal planning. I don’t know why, but I really really do. So the thought of doing it every single week was stopping me from doing it–ever. This was not good.

Before we had kids, we just ran out and bought food or went out to eat on a whim each evening when we both returned home from our full-time jobs (not the most economical choice). I also really stink at choosing what I want to eat in the moment. Does this happen to you? You know you’re hungry, but then someone asks you, “What do you want to eat?” and it’s like they asked you to name all of the generals in the War of 1812 in alphabetical order. So I needed a solution, some sort of plan, but I loathed the idea of sitting down every week to hash out another plan.
For a while we tried “theme nights” where one night we’d eat Mexican food, one night was Italian, Friday was pizza, etc. It helped me narrow things down, but without a very specific menu item on my plan, my plan always failed.
Finally, I found my solution: monthly meal planning. At the end of each month, I sit down for about 15-20 minutes in front of a calendar of the month. Fridays are pizza-movie nights at our house, so I always start by writing “pizza” for every Friday. It gives me the traction to keep going. I look through the calendar at the days I know that either my husband or I will not be home, so I can plan meals that will work for those days. Then I start arbitrarily plugging meals into different days. Maybe for the 1st I will write “quesadillas.” Then I will go down the calendar closer to the second half of the month and write it again for another day (maybe the 18th?). Maybe the 2nd will be spaghetti. I’ll put spaghetti again on the 26th (or close to it). I will plug in meals like this until each day is filled. If I want to include a new recipe that month (sometimes I don’t), I will intentionally put these new menu items on Saturdays or certain holidays when I know we’ll be home and I’ll have more time to throw something together.

Often I will write “leftovers” for one of the days of the month and my kids end up LOVING this day because we have turned it into a day where we pretend we are at a restaurant. Sometimes I’ll even type up what we have to choose from and let the child whose day it is pass it around like a menu and take orders and then he will help me make each plate and “deliver” them to the table.
Once every day has a meal assigned to it, I go through my calendar day by day and write the ingredients I will need to buy to make this meal. For example, for “quesadillas,” I know I will need to buy more tortillas and more cheese. I write these items on my list. Then I go to the 2nd and add “spaghetti noodles” and “sausage” to my list. I may go check in the pantry or the refrigerator to see if I have certain ingredients. Once I have my list of all the items I need to make each of these dinners, I add things I will need to make breakfasts and lunches for the month. I also add items like eggs, butter, and flour, when I need them. Most of the things that I buy can be purchased in bulk at Costco, so I typically make one big trip to Costco and buy most of the foods we will need for the month. We will have to make a couple stops at our local grocery store to buy more gallons of milk or more bread, but for the most part, our shopping for the whole month is done. It is so nice to not have to worry about finding time each and every week to make a list and buy a lot of food. I know that the fewer trips we make to the store, the less money we spend, too.
Another perk to this system is flexibility. I know it seems pretty rigid because I’ve already planned out my meals for the month, but really I have the freedom and flexibility to trade meals with another day of the month easily because I already have all of the ingredients for both meals. If the 1st comes around and I really feel like eating spaghetti, I can make spaghetti that day and know that we’ll eat quesadillas on the 2nd.
This system really works for our family. Usually during the school year, I will print a calendar and write the meal plan for the month and stick it on the refrigerator so my kids can look instead of constantly asking “what’s for dinner?” and I take a picture of the calendar and send it to my husband so he has a copy in his phone as well.
It may seem to be prohibitive to spend such a large amount in groceries all at once, but I can assure you that making fewer trips to the store and buying foods intentionally and eating with a plan can save you hundreds of dollars each month.
{If you aren’t tracking your spending yet, I want to put another plug in for my favorite budgeting software: YNAB. It will really help you stay on top of your spending. It’s helped us A LOT.  I wrote a whole post about it here.}

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