Meal planning is one of the best ways to save time and money for busy families. It is the process of planning and preparing what meals to make over a set period of time. The planning, shopping and prepping are done in “batches” to save time and to help you stay on budget. We will go through 9 easy steps on how to meal plan.
Effective Meal Planning to Save you Both TIME and MONEY
To Save TIME:
* Plan for one big trip to the grocery store. Buy what you need for the week to prevent unnecessary trips to the store. Most often with spontaneous and last minute trips you pick up random items that you may not really need or want.
* You don’t have to worry about figuring out what to cook and eat on a daily basis.
* Ultimately, you want to spend less time in the kitchen and more time doing other things that are more important or more enjoyable.
To Save MONEY:
* Meal planning helps minimize wasting food. You buy what you need, cook with what you bought and minimize throwing out uneaten items.
* It helps you stay within your grocery budget.
* Planning encourages you to eat at home and gives less temptations to eat out. In addition, you can plan for healthy meals.
* Buy items in bulk and stock up on basic items when they are on sale.
* Choose meals based on items that are on sale that week.
9 Steps to Effective Meal Planning
Let’s go through the 9 steps on how to get this done! You will be able to receive the Meal Planning Template at the end of the article.
1. Determine how many meals are needed
First, take a look at your schedule. Determine how many meals are needed over the next week. Focus on the supper meals. You can use supper leftovers for lunch and breakfast can be kept simple with cereal, toast, oatmeal, fruit etc.
TIP: If this is your first go at meal planning start planning for no more than one week of meals. Once you have some experience, then go ahead and meal plan for a longer period of time.
2. What can you make with the ingredients you already have?
The second step is to scan your pantry, fridge and freezer to see how many complete meals you can make with the ingredients you already have in stock. List out these meals on the template.
3. Calculate how many more meals are needed
4. Scan the flyers
Review flyers (paper/online apps) for your favorite grocery store. Take a look to see what is on sale and then come up with meals or find recipes using these sale items. This will help you stay within your grocery budget. (Try out the “Flipp” app.)
TIP: i.e. chicken breasts are on sale! Come up with a few recipes that uses chicken breasts. Buy more than needed (or in bulk). Use what you need and freeze the remainder for future meals.
5. Create your grocery list
Now that you have come up with a list of your meals, write up your grocery list for the missing and needed items. Don’t forget the items needed for lunch and breakfast and other miscellaneous things.
TIP: Organize your grocery list by departments in the order that you will walk through the store.
6. Go grocery shopping!
Sometimes when you shop you may not be to pick up certain items (i.e. not available, you can’t find the item etc.) and you may have to come up with other meals/recipes. Perhaps you found other ingredients that were on sale and can make a different meal.
TIP: Update your list of meals as needed on the template
7. Create your meal calendar
After you grocery shop fill in your meal calendar.
TIP: Organize your meals. Make the meals that require more time on the days when you know you have more time to cook. Save the fast and easy to cook recipes for days when you have less time.
8. Batch and prep meals – including snacks
Taking some time to pre-prep your meals will save a huge amount of time during the week. For example – you can chop all of your veggies for all of your meals for the week. Cook 1-2 meals if you have time before the work week starts.
TIP: An easy thing to do is to package all the snacks required for your kids’ lunches. All you need to do is just grab the snacks during the week when packing lunches.
9. Keep an ongoing grocery list
Throughout the week, keep an ongoing grocery list. When the time comes next week to come up with a grocery list, you have a partially completed list.
Ta-da! Meal planning in 9 steps to save you time and money. Time is limited for busy families and meal planning will help manage the chaos around meal times. It will help you save money by helping you stay on budget and to prevent food wastage. Good luck!
PIN For later
Enter your email and you will receive easy to follow 9 Steps to Effective Meal Planning template. It includes the 9 steps, meal list, grocery list and daily meal calendar. Just print and go!
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Better meal planning will definitely be a priority for the New Year! If I planned better then I would need to go to the store 4 times in a week (which I then almost always impulse buy). It would be a double win!
Great tips and so motivating! Love #7 and 8; our challenge is always deciding what’s for dinner after work, and most the time we have nothjng prepared/defrosted…then we get too hangry, then we just order in which adds up quick. The one-week planning sounds like a good place to start, gotta give this a go! Thanks!!
Super helpful – I always struggle to meal plan, but this is super motivating and practical! Thanks!!
These are great ideas! I need to implement these asap!
These are great tips! I especially like number 1 and 4. My boyfriend and I have noticed that our weekly groceries expenses are getting higher, so counting how many meals are needed during the week and checking out supermarket flyers before shopping is great advice. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this I’ll have to pin it for later. I think if I could get better at the grocery shopping portion this could be really beneficial to my family.
I hope it helps V! Grocery usually makes up a huge part of a family’s expenses and its a good place to start to decrease spending