Easy Meal Planning

This post is all about the easiest meal planning ever!! One simple technique will solve all your meal planning problems.

When I first got married and started having children, I quickly ran into problems with making dinner:

• I ran out of meal ideas.
• When I pulled out leftovers, I couldn’t remember when I’d made it.
• I felt like I was always making Mexican, my favorite.

So I devised this SUPER SIMPLE meal planning idea and it solved all 3 of those problems.

Here’s the jist behind my easy meal planning: Every day of the week is a different type of food: American, Mexican, Italian, Breakfast for dinner, etc.

That’s all there is to it!

1. Assign a different type of food for each day of the week.
2. List out all the meals you can think of for that type of food.
3. Each week pick out what you want to make that week.

Solves All Your Problems

How it solves my problems:

• I don’t run out of meal ideas. Each type of food has at least 8 suggestions on it, so chances are I am not having the same meal twice in a month or two. If I do repeat meals it’s because I love it, not because I’ve run out of ideas.
• When I pull out leftovers, I know exactly which day I made it. For example, if I pull out enchilada casserole I know Tuesday is Mexican, so I made it on Tuesday. If I pull out a soup, I know it was made last Sunday. This helps my family know which leftovers are the oldest and to eat them first. Or which ones are too old to eat. (Never happens! All our food gets eaten right away now, but back when I only had a husband and toddler this was an issue.)
• Now I don’t feel like I’m making Mexican all the time. I know it’s only once a week and just as often as Italian (husband’s favorite). Before, it felt like the only ideas I had were Mexican and I didn’t have enough variety in our cuisine.

Here’s My Easy Meal Planning Chart

I came up with this easy meal planning chart just by giving each day of the week a type of cuisine. Then writing down every meal I could think of under that type of food. If I ever run out of ideas I can simply look in a cookbook under soups to find some more ideas.

Feel free to download and use my chart or make your own.

There ya go!! Super easy meal planning!! This will take a huge load off your shoulders, I promise! This helps narrow down your options so instead of being stumped at what to have for dinner, you know it’s Italian night and you can make any Italian food you didn’t make last Wednesday. Such a relief to know you haven’t had Italian in a week; that you’ve been having a variety of dishes.