How to Meal Plan for a Busy Family
...and build a binder of recipes along the way.
“What's for dinner?”
The dreaded question. But only when you don't have a plan.
Listen, I get it. I don't always have a meal plan for the week. But when I do take the time to make a plan? Man, life sure goes a lot more smoothly that week.
Why Meal Plan?
Making homemade meals has genuinely never been easier with so many conveniences available so it's truly not that hard.
And saves so much money and stress and we all eat healthier too.
How We Meal Plan for Our Family
I'm going to show you how our family of five takes advantage of grocery ordering and online recipes to come up with our weekly meal plan. It takes me maybe 15 minutes.
We eat homemade dinners almost every night while still juggling three kids in sports, work and school! If we can do it, so can you!
Here's a look at our weekly meal-planning process.
1. Print the Meal Planner
You can get the exact printable meal planner I use. It's free when you subscribe to my emails or buy it here for $1. It's a PDF so you can print out a fresh copy each week or laminate it. I use a home laminator and a thin dry erase marker to fill it out.
I like to plan my week on Sundays and order groceries for the week that day. But choose a day that works for you.
Need a printer or ink? Shop home printers and printer ink on amazon.
2. Find Dinner Ideas
Start with meals you already know your family loves.
Browse my 200+ easy dinner ideas to find new recipes to try.
Or skip searching for and deciding on recipes and use my seasonal cookbooks. Each cookbook offers 5 delicious dinner recipes for each season.
3. Fill in Your Week
Fill in each day of the week with the meals you want to make. You can add dinners only or include lunch and breakfast too.
Pencil in your meals so you can make changes. Or, as I mentioned, laminate your meal plan to wipe and make changes and also reuse it, week to week.
Write down your grocery list to shop in person or use your phone to order groceries — this is what we usually do!
Pro Tip: Pick at least one day each week to rest and eat up leftovers or write in if you plan to order out.
Get my meal planner FREE when you sign up for my emails.
4. Print Recipes
I like to print and hang up the recipes I'm making for the week.
This helps everyone know what's coming for dinner.
If you're choosing dinner recipes from my website or another website, look for the printer icon in the recipe card to print. My seasonal cookbook is designed to be printed, just print the recipe page(s) you plan to make.
Pro tip: Designate a command center.
Clip your meal plan to the fridge or use a corkboard with large clips. Having a designated spot for your meal plan will help you get into a routine of planning ahead.
5. Order Groceries
Ordering groceries online for pick up or delivery is such a time saver for our family. And while there is a fee, ordering prevents impulse buys. We did pick-up for awhile but finally splurged on delivery after we had our third child. It's so amazing to have groceries just show up on your doorstep.
If you're more of an in-person shopper, use the bottom of my meal planner to make your list.
If you use Walmart for your groceries, I do have a convenient link to shop Walmart for groceries, located in the recipe card of every recipe on this website.
If you're using recipes from my cookbooks, the groceries are shopped for you! Each recipe page looks like this, with a QR code:
Use your phone's camera to scan the QR code.
Pro Tip: Group ingredients by recipe for the week using clear fridge bins.
Online grocery ordering is currently only offered through Walmart. You must have the Walmart app or use Walmart.com for this to work. Mighty Mrs. is an official #WalmartPartner.
6. Start Cooking!
This is the fun part! Cook and enjoy a delicious meal with friends or family. Have the kids help with cooking and clean up. This builds character!
7. Save Your Favorite Recipes
Did you try a new recipe and your family loved it? Add it to your collection! We use a large binder with plastic sleeves purchased from Amazon.
Check out my shop for everything you need to make your own Favorite Recipes binder for your family. Shop recipe binder supplies here.
What do you think?
Can you see this working for your family?
If this feels like too big of a leap for you right now, you may want to start with my Weekly Themed Dinner Menu. This is more of a last-minute guide that is repeatable and gives your week structure without having to make a bunch of decisions.
★ FAQs ★
In my opinion, 30-day meal plans just aren't realistic. A 30-day meal plan is great in theory but really hard to make work especially for busy families who have schedules that differ every day, week-to-week. That's why we use this weekly system. It works for us.
Trying five new recipes per season is a healthy goal. Some months are busier than others. Trying 1-2 new recipes a month is a great way to slowly broaden your horizons without getting overwhelmed.
Helping you try a few new recipes a month is the goal of my seasonal cookbooks. Low pressure, more realistic and actually achievable! Some weeks you might have time and energy to try new recipes, other weeks you might not. Meal planning week-to-week allows you to fit meals with your schedule.
All the time. It's okay to repeat meals! Feel free to repeat the same recipe if it's one you really love! School cafeterias and restaurants repeat meals all the time. Why? It's efficient.
Why repeating meals is actually a great idea:
• You’ll start to memorize the recipes, making prep faster and more flexible.
• Picky eaters get more chances to warm up to new foods.
• It adds comfort and routine to dinner time.
• Simplifies grocery shopping.
• Leftovers and ingredients get used up, saving money.
• After a while, everyone will be ready for something new!
Everyone may not love every single meal and that's OK. Feel free to customize the recipe to your family's liking. I have suggestions for substitutes on each recipe. The best way I have found to accommodate picky eaters is to offer the meal deconstructed. Set aside some plain pasta without sauce, offer raw veggies instead of cooked, and generally keep ingredients separate so the picky eater can try each item individually.
Many times, dinner leftovers can be taken for lunch. Or if you want something special, browse my lunch recipes.
Browse all my easy breakfast recipes here. Some of my breakfast recipes can be frozen and heated for easy to-go meals.
Depending on your family size and how many leftovers you want, you can adjust the servings using the sliding scale on each of my recipes.
The meal planner is a PDF which you can download as a file and open it with Acrobat Reader or you can just open the PDF in your browser and print from there.
Open your phone camera, point it at the QR code so it appears on your phone screen. This will automatically generate a link you can tap.