Masterful Meal Planning: Tips, Planning Templates, and More
If you’re responsible for family meal planning, including grocery shopping, meal prep, and cleanup, you know how many hours it can take in any given week. What if you could manage those tasks more effectively and save yourself a lot of time along the way?
The good news? You can. With an efficient planning process, some household support, and a customizable family meal planner template, you can become a meal planning pro and get back hours in your week.
5 Steps to Successful Meal Planning
Planning meals in advance delivers a host of benefits. In addition to saving time, it makes grocery shopping more efficient and takes the stress out of meal prep. As a result, you can approach each meal knowing exactly what’s on the menu and how long it will take to pull the meal together.
Weekly or monthly meal planning is a great idea for any household, but getting started can be a bit overwhelming. There are many factors to consider, and you may not know much about selecting a meal planning template. However, by following the detailed steps below and getting familiar with meal planning best practices, you can plan delicious, nutritious, and stress-free meals every day.
Here’s how to get started:
1. Set a solid meal planning foundation.
Before you sit down to populate a monthly meal plan template, you’ll need to determine what meal planning will look like for you and how you’ll make it a part of your routine. Setting this foundation ahead of time will ensure meal planning doesn’t become something you do only once and then abandon.
Some of the questions you’ll want to answer during this step include:
- Are there any nutritional goals I want to accomplish?
- What kinds of cuisines and food groups do I want more or less of each month?
- Do I want to plan meals for the week or the month?
- How much time do I want to spend on grocery shopping and meal prep?
- What menu alternatives can I use when there’s no time for meal prep? Leftovers? Preprepared meals? Takeout?
2. Build your family meal planner template.
Fortunately, you won’t have to create a family meal plan template from scratch. Several meal planning apps, printables, and free meal plan templates exist online. You can also access editable weekly and monthly meal plan templates in our family meal planning guide.
Whether you select a weekly or monthly template, make sure it includes enough space for menus, recipe ideas, and notes. Your template should also be printable so you can share it with your family and anyone helping with grocery shopping and meal prep.
3. Involve your family in the meal planning process.
Family meal plans work best when they incorporate everyone’s food preferences and nutritional needs. Get input from family members about what they want to see in the meal plan. You can also post the whole plan in a central location so everyone knows what’s on the menu and can help when needed.
4. Get support from a household assistant.
Considering that household chores can take more than 21 hours per week, it makes a lot of sense to lighten your load with household help. In addition to the other household activities a household assistant can perform, such as doing laundry, running errands, and supervising vendors, your assistant can manage the following meal planning tasks:
- Grocery shopping
- Pantry and fridge inventory planning
- Meal prep and cooking services
- Researching new recipes based on your dietary preferences
5. Refine your meal plan periodically.
Like anything else, periodic improvements to your meal plan will make it more efficient and dynamic. For example, you can add new recipes and evaluate menus for more nutritional balance. You can also optimize meal prep by adding slow-cooker meals and freezing portions of meals beforehand. Each month, you’ll become more skilled in creating menus and getting everything on the table with less fuss.
Make Family Meal Times Less Stressful and More Enjoyable
If you’re ready to add time back into your schedule and prepare nutritious meals your whole family will love, make meal planning a regular part of your household management activities. It’s an excellent way to eat the foods you want without the stress of last-minute shopping and meal prep.
We want to help make meal planning as easy as possible for you. Get on the road to becoming a meal planning pro by downloading The Ultimate Guide to Family Meal Planning: Strategies, Templates, and Resources.
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