Making a Meal Plan that Works for You

I’ve been meal planning since the beginning of our marriage and let me tell you, I’m completely lost without it. I honestly don’t know how people do it! I’m the type of person who really likes structure, and I thrive when I’m using my planner. This method of meal planning allows me to switch meals around when needed and helps keep my mind free of clutter.

Why it works:

When I first started meal planning once we were married, I would plan out a whole months worth of meals at a time. Now things have changed and I’ve been learning how to keep my health under control with my diet so I plan out 2 weeks worth of meals at a time. I still have flexibility but I can change things up as my diet changes. With planning 2 weeks of meals I have the ability to switch things up when needed and I can double up some meals and have days where I don’t need to do any cooking; this is wonderful on busy weekends! Along with doubling up meals, I try think ahead and make larger portions of sides that we can have a few times in those two weeks; this save us time and money.

How I do it:

The first thing I do is make a bi-weekly meal plan. I’ll grab a few cookbooks and take a look on Pinterest for the recipes I want to use. To keep things interesting so I’m not repeating the same type of meal too often I meal plan by category: charting out a graph with 14 days I’ll find 2 recipes for each category. These categories are: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Fish, Soup, Breakfast, and Other.

The “Other” category can be anything but I typically like to use this for quick and easy meals like pizza, tacos, or sometimes leftovers. On the subject of leftovers, if you have unexpected leftovers you can freeze them in single serving portions for a quick dinner or lunch!

As mentioned above, to help save time I’ll pick out few meals that can easily be doubled and froze for the next week; this is usually a chicken meal, and soup. That way if we need a quick meal, it’s already there, it just needs to be warmed up; this helps us not to eat out too often.

Now that the dinners are planned out, I move on to planning breakfast and snacks. I typically worry about lunches as they come, because most of the time we have leftovers or I’ll keep chicken or sausage patties in the freezer. For planning breakfast and snacks, however, I’ll come up with 2 or 3 things to pick and choose from. As for breakfast, I don’t eat too much in the morning, so I’ll make something like pancakes, baked oats or cottage cheese parfaits, and my husband will eat that with me along with a couple of eggs. I try to bake at least one snack thing, like cookies, a week for us, but I also keep fruit, rice cakes, chips, and pumpkin seed butter on hand. I love experimenting with new recipes, and snacks are a great way to do that!

Once I’ve figured out what I want to make, I’ll plan out when to make it. This is totally optional but it can be so helpful to already know what you’re going to make for dinner that night. I like to think ahead about what we’re doing that week and plan my meals out accordingly. I try to keep track of my menu using an old picture frame and wet erase markers so I can switch days around if needed. I look at my meal plan as a guide rather than something that is set in stone.

After all of that is done, it’s time to make the grocery list. This is written in categories as well: starting with meat, on to produce, dairy, dry goods, and other. I have this written in order of what I get first as I shop at multiple stores to get the best deals. I try to start at a local meat market because it’s the furthest store out and then I work my way back from there, so this order works best for me.

It’s important to double check your recipes to make sure you have everything written down, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve written down a meal and didn’t buy the ingredients for it! Tonight was supposed to be beef stroganoff, I have the beef but nothing else for it so instead of going back to the store, because I already spent what I had budgeted for this grocery trip, I’ve changed it to shepherds pie. It was an easy switch because I always keeps potatoes and carrots on hand. The beef is currently cooking in the instant pot and I’ll use the broth from that to make a quick gravy. It’s defiantly not authentic but its going to feed my husband and I, and give us lunch for tomorrow.

Next comes the shopping trip. To save the most money while grocery shopping I think it’s important to go into the store yourself, when possible, so that you can easily compare prices, and make substitutes on the fly. I have learned what to get at each store in my area to get the best deals; for us this is key to eating well on a tight budget… well that and learning how to cook certainly helps! But like always do your best with what you have and what’s available to you. I know that going into the store with kids isn’t easy so if you need to do grocery pick up instead, then that’s what you need to do.

With the shopping trip out of the way, I have all I need at this point to feed my family without stress!

Here you can download and use my Bi-weekly Meal Plan * which includes a blank version so you can add your own categories. You can also download my Weekly Menu*, and Categorized Grocery List.*

*These Printables are for your personal use only, you may share them with friends and family but you may not sell them as your own.*

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I know that this seems like a lot of work just to plan out what we’re going to eat but I can assure you it’s worth the effort! Meal planning like this works great for us; I’m not worried day to day what to make, and I have the ability to move meals around when needed.

What are some of your favorite meals to make? Lately I’ve been enjoying making this delicious Stuffed Pepper Casserole. Leave your thoughts down below!