Meal Planning Organization

Sometimes meal planning can get tedious and difficult, but setting up a family friendly system can help make meal planning easier.  When the whole family is involved, it can make things go a little smoother, and many times, kids are more willing to eat the meals that are placed before them without complaining.  When I found out that D is going to have to go in for another back surgery, I knew that it was time to start getting serious about meal planning again.  I wanted to create a new system that would be functional, easy to use, and look nice in the kitchen.  I started thinking about some of the things that have worked for us in our homeschool and came up with this tag board for weekly meal planning.

Each recipe gets a number which is written on the recipe card and the corresponding hang tag. The hang tag is also labeled with the actual meal and then placed on the meal plan board. The board itself is divided into days of the week and breakfast, lunch, dinner. Not all hang tags will require a recipe, so these tags will not receive a number. I created a few recipe card sets that coordinate with the hang tag board and tags.

When deciding on recipes, I select family favorites for the bulk of the recipes, and then I add a few new recipes to try. If the family enjoys the new recipe, it can be added to the regular rotation.

In theory, I want to have a meal plan ready for the entire month. I plan on writing down all of the meal ideas for the month on the above sheets. All of those recipes would be pulled and placed in a recipe binder (small photo album works well for this purpose) for easy access and use during the month. The recipes can be laminated, so they last longer. Plus, notes (and numbers) can be written on the recipe cards with dry erase markers.  If they’re in a photo album, they don’t necessarily need to be laminated.

Once I know what meals I’m going to be preparing, I can plan out my grocery lists on a weekly/monthly basis. Knowing what I need to buy for the month will allow me more freedom to buy things on sale. When I find certain items on a really good sale, I can rotate those things into the menu plan or I can store them for later.

We’ll see how the new system works once I get it into place.  It may require some tweaking, but I think after the initial set-up, it will make things much easier in the kitchen when my focus is on other things.

Do you have a meal planning system that works for you?  I’d love to hear about it.  If you like the design, feel free to download the free meal planning set.  Knowing me, I’ll probably create different designs.  Let me know if you like this set and would like for me to post the new designs.

This post is feature in The Christian Home issue 31.