Simple Meal Planning For Busy Working Moms Easy As 1, 2, 3!

Meal planning is a sanity saver for busy working moms. Save yourself time, money, and mental stress by using this simple 3 step formula for meal planning for your family. 

It’s 5:45 pm, and you’ve been asked the dreaded question at least ten times in the last 15 minutes…what’s to eat?

As long as you have kids, they are going to want to eat! #truestory: If you think the toddler years are fun, just wait until you have teenagers.

I know as a busy working mom, you may feel that creating a working mom meal planning is not worth the time and effort it takes to create and execute. Before I learned this simple meal planning system, I would agree!

Let me make meal planning easier for you, keep reading to learn my favorite system for meal planning. It’s simple, and effective, and anyone can do it.

Pinky promise! So grab your favorite drink and check this out.

Simple Meal Planning To Answer “What’s For Dinner?”

How many times have you heard “what’s for dinner?” and your answer was, “I don’t know.”?

Years ago, in our house, my answer was “ummmmm,” and I got pretty darn good at pulling things out of the fridge on short notice when I was a stay-at-home mom. 

Now that I am a working mom, I don’t have the time or the energy to battle with trying to make dinner appear out of thin air.

Like many of you, there were days I dreaded walking in the door after work, especially if I realized I had not taken anything out of the freezer. I’d shoot a text off to my husband asking him to pick something up on the way home. 

I quickly realized that if a homeschool planner helped me manage my hectic life, then a meal planner would be my answer to the chaos of dinner time. 

Different Types Of Meal Planning For Busy Moms

Meal planning is not a new idea. There are a ton of how-tos around the internet.

Still, many of them seem overly complicated with color-coding systems, daily themes, and even plans where you cook everything for an entire month at once. Too many dishes at once for me, but if that is your thing, I say go for it!

Never Say Never: I always avoided freezer meal plans because they seemed like too much work. Then I found the right plan and it changed my life.

Then there are those that meal plan without a plan. I chatted with one mom who shares how she does her “no plan meal planning.” She does it all from memory. I could feel my stress level rising as she talked. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, never mind what is at the bottom of my freezer.

The 3 Steps Simple To Meal Planning

I’m so excited to share with you the system I’ve been using for over ten years now, it’s perfect for creating a “busy mom meal plan”.

This three-step system allows me to meal plan each week in 15 minutes FLAT! It is not complicated, but like any reliable system, it does require a bit of an upfront effort to make it work. 

I meal plan each week in about 15 minutes because I’ve done the hard work. 

Here are the three steps to simple meal planning:

1. Create an inventory of what you have on hand.
2. Create a master recipe list. 
3. Create a weekly or monthly meal plan. 

Pretty simple right? 

The problem is caving to the temptation to skip the first two steps and go right to step 3. It is easy to hop on Pinterest, grab 5-7 recipes that look pretty, write the names on a meal planning page or app, and hit the stores. 

You technically can do this IF you want to blow a bunch of money and only want a short-term solution. 

If you are looking for a system that you can stick with for the long haul, then keep reading. 

3 Benefits Of Meal Planning

Meal planning, in the end, saves you time. You know what to buy when you go grocery shopping because you have a list. You know what to make when you get home because you have a plan.

Meal planning saves you money. No more buying dill only to find out you had three bottles unopened at home. No more grabbing take-out on the way home than feeling guilty about the money you spent and the fact it is not the healthiest food out there. 

You can shop around sales, and you won’t be buying food only for it to sit in your cupboards to go to waste. 

Meal planning saves your mental energy. Decision-making is exhausting. You make decisions from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall into bed. With a meal plan, you remove some of those decisions. Instead of panicking about what to make, you can just pick something from your list and go. 

Why Create A Food Inventory

The first step in meal planning is to start with what you already have in the house.

What is in your pantry? Fridge? Freezer? Cupboards? I’m guessing without looking you can list off 5-10 things, but what about blueberries? Oil? And how long has it been there? And if you are anything like me, you have no idea what spices and baking ingredients you have on hand. 

While this step is the longest and most time-consuming step, it is also the critical step to saving money and time. Because each item in your home was purchased to use and when we don’t, it ends up wasted. 

Making a food inventory can solve this problem. 

How To Create A Food Inventory

To create a food inventory, you will go through your kitchen cupboards, fridge, freezer, pantry, and anywhere else you store food. You will write down what you have, how many of each item, and when they expire. 

You can do this over a few days or make a big day of it and get your family involved to help. 

Remember: this step will take a lot of time. 

Once you’ve created your inventory, make sure to keep it up to date. We keep a running list on our fridge. When someone has used the last item, it is their responsibility to write it on the list. 

Above, I am using the inventory sheets in my meal planner, which is included in the Quick & Easy Meal Bundle. For some reason, expiry dates like to hide in odd places. Your kids may have fun hunting them down!

I have created a detailed step-by-step guide on how to create an inventory for your kitchen here.

Why You Need A Master Recipe List

“Every time I cook, the kids complain.” Sound familiar? What if you could cook meals you knew your kids loved 80% of the time? 

This is the “magic” of a master recipe list. Notice I said 80% of the time? I’ll get to that in a minute. 

What Is A Master Recipe List?

A master recipe list is a list of recipes that you can use to create the foundation of your meal plan. 

These are your tried and true family favorites:

• You and your family love
• You know your kids will eat
• You know how to make

How To Create A Master Recipe List:

I like to create this list in two parts:

• Part one: Use recipes and meals we have
• Part two: Add to the list as we go

Disclosure: I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

First, I write down meals we cook so much we don’t even have recipes for. Next, I go through the ones we do need recipes for and add them in. I use a three-hole binder; that way, when I print off the recipes, I can slide them into a plastic sleeve and pop them right in. 

The plastic sleeve protects the recipe from getting damaged while cooking or baking!

You can also get your kids involved. Dump all your recipe books on the floor and give your kids some paper clips or sticky notes. Have them mark all the recipes they have loved from these books.

My teens will help dig through our favorite cookbooks if I provide snack food and print off a recipe page for my master recipe list.

Later you can photocopy them and add them to your binder. 

However you choose to do it, you’ll want around 5-7 breakfast, 10 or so lunch ideas should you wish to meal plan those meals, and around 30 dinners. 

Meal Planning Decisions You Need To Make

Now, I need to add that you should decide how long you want to plan for and what meals you need to plan to make your life run smoothly. 

Do you want to plan:

• by the week?
• every two weeks?
• by the month?

Pick what you think will work and go with that. Remember, if you find out that it is not working for you, you can change it later. 

Next, decide if you want to plan all the meals such as breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner, or do you want to plan the basics? 

In our house, the kids make their breakfast, so we keep the necessary ingredients on-hand such as cereal, oatmeal, and frozen waffles for a treat. We also keep ingredients to make breakfast bowls for my husband and me. Sometimes I’ll add a special breakfast to make on the weekend. 

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A post shared by Jen! (@practicalbydefault) on Feb 3, 2020 at 10:47am PST

Lunches in our house are meal prepped and do get added to our meal plan for my husband and me. The kids prefer leftovers from dinner, sandwiches, salads, and the odd can of beans or frozen french fries. 

Snacks are not planned, but we keep our favorites on hand. Therefore the only thing we list out each week is our dinner meals. 

Again all of these can be listed in your meal planner binder, which will remove the decision-making process later. 

How To Meal Plan For The Week In 15 Minutes 

Now the good stuff. I’m going to show you exactly how I meal plan for the week. 

First, I grab the list off of the fridge and take note of any items we need to pick up and add them to my grocery list. 

Next, I flip through the flyers, using an app called FLIPP. Since my husband prefers meat with every dinner, I start that finding what is on sale that week. I add deals to the grocery list. 

Next, pull out a meal planning tool. I like to print out the meal planning pages from my meal planner because I enjoy having them written out. You can use Trello or whatever works best for you.

Lastly, based on the sales, I pull out dinner ideas 5-6 that I know we love from our meal planning binder and add them to the meal planning pages. I take note of any ingredients that will have to be purchased and add those to the grocery list to buy. 

And done!

In 15 minutes, I have my dinner list ideas for the week and a completed grocery list ready to go. 

Now each day our dinners are a snap! This is a great system when your kids do some cooking because they can pick from the list a meal they are comfortable with and make dinner. It’s a win, win!

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You may also enjoy:

• 5 Pantry Meals For “Oh Crap I Forgot About Dinner” Nights!
• Menu Planning and Meals for the Working Homeschool Mom
• How To Meal Prep To Save Your Family Time And Money
• 5 Easy Ways To Save Money On Your Grocery Budget Without Coupons

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How to Beat Meal Planning Boredom 

WARNING: If you only pull from the recipes you know and love, you may get bored to tears. How many times can you eat chili in a month? It’s great the first three times, lol!

This is where the 80% rule came in.

To jazz up your meal plan and to make sure you don’t eat chicken, steamed veggies, and potatoes every single night for the rest of your life add in one to two new meal ideas a week. 

You can find these new ideas on Pinterest, in recipe books, with friends and family, or done for you meal planning resources. This is a fun way to make dinners exciting and, at the same time, expose your family to new foods.

I still try to line the new ideas up with what is on sale to save money.

After the meal is over, ask your family, “Is this meal a “make it again meal” or pass?” Note, I did not say do you like it? Otherwise, I get, “yeah.” Does that mean yes or maybe or ???

If it is a “make it again meal”, it gets added to our binder along with any notes or changes I made to the recipe. 

The Power Of A Meal Planning Routine

Meal planning is one thing that works great when you do them. You can have your inventory done, but if you don’t keep up with it, you’ll need to start from scratch every few months. 

The best way to stay on top of it all is to make it routine.

I know we do our shopping on Saturday, so I’ll remind the kids to add what they need to the fridge list on Thursday. We do our meal planning on Friday night, and everything is set for our shopping trip. 

And I must add “meal planning” to my planner each week because it doesn’t get done if it is not in my planner.

Meal Planning For Working Moms: Keep It Simple

Meal planning doesn’t have to be overwhelming and time-consuming. Once you get the first two steps in place, the rest is easy, peasy!

If you end up finding meal planning for a month is too much work, try something else. You may need to experiment a bit to find the one that works best for your family.

In 15 minutes, you can meal plan your week, saving time, money, and the mental stress of decision-making. You know the plan each day, and you can enjoy your day stress-free!

How do you meal plan for your family? 

Meal planning saves time, money, and sanity.  For this system to work for me, I needed a planner designed for how I meal plan. You can find this meal planner included in the Quick & Easy Meal Bundle.

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