Today I want to share how I go about meal planning and grocery shopping each week. Of course there is no one right way to go about this and each person will have their own way of meal planning and/or grocery shopping that works best for them. This is simply what has been working best for me lately and if you’re looking to make a change in this area, hopefully you’ll find a new idea to try based on what I share!

How do you feel when you think about meal planning (in whatever unstructured or structured way that looks like for you)?  I know for me, some weeks I am excited and motivated to think about ideas for what to make that week. However, I find that a lot of the time, with life being full and busy the way that it tends to be, meal planning and grocery shopping just feel like another thing to do and I want it to be as easy and streamlined as possible!

Thus, I have developed a system for meal planning that helps me efficiently plan our meals each week in a way that works for us, without me spending tons of time thinking and overcomplicating things. Read on to learn more about my process!

Libby’s Meal Planning Strategy 101

• My strategy begins at the beginning of the month, when I take a sheet of paper and write out potential ideas for meals to make that month. I know when I write these down that by no means am I planning to make all of these dishes – they are simply hypothetical ideas. There are two places that I go for meal ideas to write down – my Pinterest account (which is organized by meal type so I can easily find things) and my “home binder” in which I have a printed list of dinner ideas that I have made in the past and that we both liked (and that I would want to make again). I like to write these ideas out on a sheet of paper each month because I found that before I invested this bit of time at the beginning of each month, I would end up spending way more time each week scouring my Pinterest account trying to think of what sounds good to make that week. My sheet thus acts as a reference of ideas that I go off of when planning our actual meals each week. It usually includes meals I have made before and a few new ideas. I also like to include a few lunch, snack, and dessert ideas. My sheet will then look something like this:

• Then, each week (currently on Friday mornings), I sit down with my planner and home binder (where the monthly meals ideas sheet is located) to plan my week. This planning time includes meal planning and writing the week’s grocery list! The main categories I’m thinking of when it comes to planning the meals for the week include dinners for the week, one lunch for the week, one breakfast for the week, and a few snack ideas. I reference the monthly meals ideas sheet to write down the actual dishes I will be making that week. I write out the week’s dinner menu on an index card that I display on the side of the fridge. This is what that looks like!

• With there being only two of us to cook for, we definitely make use of leftovers so that we aren’t cooking every night. My general pattern is to cook Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That means leftovers are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The weekends tend to be a bit more fluid, but in general, if I cooked something on Friday we will have leftovers on Saturday and then Sunday will be something really simple (such as a frozen soup I made previously or scrambled eggs with sides). If we are going out to dinner on Friday, I will cook Saturdays. If we have plans Saturday evening, we’ll have Friday’s leftovers on Sunday! While I find it very helpful to plan ahead with dinners, being flexible is also key!
• I mentioned above that I like to only plan one lunch idea for the week, as this helps keep things simple – I write down the lunch for the week in a blank space in my planner. Lunches are usually salads or sandwiches, sometimes soup in the winter. I reference the monthly meals ideas sheet when choosing what the lunch will be that week.
• As you know, breakfast is usually the same thing (oatmeal + almond butter + fruit) to keep things extra simple in the morning! Sometimes I make pancakes when I have more time!

• After I’ve planned out our main meals for the week, I write the grocery list. We shop at Trader Joe’s and Costco (and sometimes Whole Foods or Amazon if I need to get a more “specialty item”), so I organize the list in this way. I go through what we need for each dinner, our lunches and breakfasts, and any snacks or desserts. I also add any toiletries or household items (like paper towel, cleaning supplies) that we are out of to this list.
• That’s all for the actual meal planning process! I then actually go to the grocery store to get everything the next day, currently on Saturdays. I usually have a few things I like to prep after the grocery shopping trip to have them on hand and ready for the week. I can do another post on food prepping to share more, but this generally includes energy bites, any salad or sandwich toppings, any fruit that needs cutting that would be annoying to randomly cut in the middle of the week (like cantaloupe or watermelon), and maybe some muffins or granola. This TOTALLY depends on how much time I have and what I feel like doing each week, but I like to keep it to an hour – hour and a half at most! Sometimes it’s 15 minutes! Here is what last weekend’s food prepping looked like:

That’s it! Now you know how I like to go about planning our meals for the week. This process can be customized in many ways to suit you and your life, depending on how many you cook for, how often you like to cook, how organized you like to be, and more! I find that staying organized in this way and having a plan is extremely helpful for us with our full schedules each week. The plan helps us by:

• Not having to think each day about what to eat for dinner
• Spending minimal time planning our meals by utilizing the home binder resources (i.e., the master list of meals we like and the monthly meals ideas list)
• Cutting down on food waste
• Intentionally including variety of food/nutrition in our diets each week!

What tips do you have for meal planning? I’d love to hear them!