Meal planning is that never-ending, daunting task of any mother. Day in, day out, whether you’ve put in the forethought or not, you and your family must eat. Sometimes it feels like we as a family just ate a meal, yet here we are already, needing dinner.
Whether you’re in a rut of throwing meals together last-minute or you’re team Plan-For-Days, you can hopefully learn something from this blog post that helps this daily responsibility of feeding your family!
In the past, I’ve tried planning my meals for a month at a time, which was overwhelming to me and just frankly, too much. And then I tried the whole weekly rotation of “meatless Mondays, Taco Tuesday, Chicken Wednesday, Beef Thursday, Fish Friday,” etc…. but my husband and I tired of it quickly, as for one, I didn’t want to be eating almost the same thing on each day of the week, even though I totally get the theory behind this method and why it works for some people! It just didn’t work for us. I ended up making other meals because I was just hungry for a different type of food. Anyways. There’s what seems like a bajillion methods behind various meal planning techniques, and I’m here to add another one to the mix for you to consider!
Whatever you’ve tried in the past, whether you need to reduce the overwhelm a tad (but not uproot your entire routine) then this method I’m talking about will hopefully help to lighten your daily load! Seriously, we have so many hats we wear as mothers already, so lightening ANY load is a win in my book!
Introducing… The Meal List!
The method that saves my life as a meal-making mama is as simple as writing the meals you and your family like into one ultimate categorized list. Basically, the biggest time save this provides you is the mental fatigue of thinking of meals you can make with XYZ that you have in the fridge.
I speak as a mama of toddlers, currently 2 and 3 years old, I feel so mentally drained most days. The effort it takes to display calmness during toddler meltdowns or arguments or whining or whatever obstacle we’re constantly trying to overcome as a family, is EXHAUSTING. So often, meal plans have been on the back-burner because this mama’s just trying to make it through the day without putting her toddler on screens for the sake of having “a moment of peace to myself.”
Your personalized meal list saves you from mental and decision fatigue by categorizing meals you like and know how to make, for quicker and easier meal planning
Here’s a larger description of the Meal List: It’s a time-saving tool that you create for yourself based on the meals that you and your family enjoy. You literally have a long list of meals, and then categorize them by type of dish so that it’s easier to peruse. Think of the index of a cook book — this will be similar to that, except that you will create your own ultimate list that fits your family’s exact needs! The whole concept of the Meal List is that it saves you mental load by listing out ALL the meals you and your family like, so that if for example, you have one pound of ground beef in the fridge, you can look at a specific section in your Meal List and find all the different meals you could make with ground beef that you and your family like! If you searched Pinterest for “meal ideas with one pound of ground beef”, then you’d get a ton of ideas, yes, but sometimes you just need to keep it simple for your sanity’s sake. So, you glance over your Meal List and find a condensed list of 10 meal options you could make with one pound of ground beef. You choose one, and move on with making dinner! Time saved!
The other major benefit to the Meal List is having it nearby where your family can peruse it if they’re going to be making the meal or if they’d like to help decide what you’re all eating that week. My husband gets cravings for certain foods, and I like to make the foods he enjoys, so when I do my meal plan for the upcoming week, sometimes I’ll hand him the Meal List and have him pick out some foods he wants so I’ll grocery shop and plan accordingly! It just makes it so easy, because you don’t have to constantly “pull” meal ideas out of your head, or search Pinterest and risk the overwhelm of new recipe options, but rather, you can just look at your own categorized list of meals you like and just go from there!
How To Make Your Own Meal List – Step By Step
Making your own Meal List takes some time, as you’re going to have to take a dive into your recipe book, cook books, your own mind, and maybe even Pinterest or wherever you store all those meal ideas. In short, the first step is collecting the names of all the meals you and your family like enough to put on the Meal List. The next step is categorizing them the way you’d like them to be categorized. I personally like to categorize mine by the main protein (chicken, beef, etc.), but you can sort your meals out by other indicators like “crock pot meals, stovetop meals, oven meals, cold meals/no-cook-meals” etc! I definitely prefer to categorize them by the protein since that’s the main vibe of the dish and I don’t usually determine meals by it’s cooking time, but what the main source of protein is (and then decide on if it’d like a slow-cooker meal or the more labor-intensive stovetop one). You find what works for you! I have a free PDF download you can use to type on or print out and help make your own Meal List.
How To Use Your Meal List
There’s many different ways you can use your Meal List. If you’re on team “meal plan for the whole month” or simply purchase basic ingredients to fill the fridge and make meals last-minute at home, the Meal List can help!
Personally, I like to use my Meal List to plan out my meals one week at a time. On Sundays, after church the kids go down for a good long nap, so I sit down and get out my planner and Meal List. First, I review our family’s schedule for the week… when does my husband have a softball game that evening, when do we have other plans away from home, and what shifts do I work this week? If I’ve got busy evenings, then I’ll choose a meal that has minimal prep time. If I’ve got a busy day with only a little bit of time at home, then I’ll choose a meal with a short cooking time. Or if there’s a day that I’m at home all day with the kids and my husband, I can choose a meal that’s a bit more labor-intensive since I’ll have the availability to make it!
So, you can use it similarly to how I use it, or find a new way to fit it into your pre-existing meal planning method! Remember, this is meant to be a tool that you can use to your advantage. No meal-planning technique is a one-size-fits-all… and most importantly, there’s no easiest “hack” to get you to feed your family… the “hack” is that you just do it. There, I said it. Haha. It seems really dumb for me to say it, but in a world where we’re constantly trying to reduce the time and responsibility spent on daily activities, we have to realize that there’s a limit to how much we can optimize a process at home. In the end, it just needs to happen. So whether you struggle with the planning part or cooking of the meals, it just needs to get done to get done. I hope that this Meal List strategy helps to ease the load of regular meal planning! Again, the mental load on a mother is not to be taken lightly! We as mamas do so many things to help our families, and while it’s a blessing, it’s certainly good hard work that can be exhausting! So, while we cannot completely “hack” our responsibilities away, hopefully this Meal List helps you to lighten the load!
Blessings!