Meal planning is just another tool that can help to simplify your life or leave you with unnecessary stress and guilt. Keep reading for a more realistic meal planning approach — one that actually works FOR you!
Meal planning is often pitched as the ultimate solution to busy weeknights, food waste, and decision fatigue — and in many ways, it can be.
But somewhere along the way, what was meant to simplify our lives can start to feel like just another task on an already overloaded to-do list.
If you’ve ever felt guilty for abandoning a carefully crafted meal plan or stressed when things didn’t go “perfectly,” you’re not alone. The truth is, meal planning should be a flexible, supportive tool that works FOR YOU — not a rigid system that adds pressure or guilt.
After nearly 20 years of low-key (but very successful) meal planning, I can promise you it’s not about perfection. You don’t need special containers, labels, spreadsheets, or any other fancy tool or program. You don’t need extra freezers stocked with ingredients (although a little extra freezer space is always nice). And you don’t even need to love cooking for meal planning to be worthwhile.
To me, meal planning is all about freedom.
It frees up brain space for other, more important matters.
It frees up time because I’m not running to the store 5 times a week for things I forgot.
It frees up energy and alleviates stress because I have the food ready when it works for my family instead of frantically rushing around at 5:30 every night.
If you’d like to enjoy the freedom that comes when meal planning actually works for you, these 7 tips should help!
1. Decide how many meals you will plan.
Will you plan all 3 meals per day? Just dinner? Dinner and Breakfast?
Also, do you anticipate eating at home 7 days a week or do you have a regular “date night” or pizza night that you won’t need to plan for?
I plan all our breakfasts and dinners each week and we generally have sandwiches or leftovers for lunch.
We also almost always have a family movie night on Saturday nights (charcuterie board) so I rarely need to come up with a dinner plan for Saturday night!
There is no right or wrong answer here… but it helps to be honest with yourself. If you know you tend to eat out many nights per week, then just acknowledge that — otherwise you’ll end up planning too many meals and buying needless groceries that will eventually go to waste.
2. Make a list of meals your family likes.
Grab a pen and paper or open the Notes App in your phone and start listing all the different meals your family likes to eat. Don’t worry about organizing them into categories — just get them out of your head and into a list.
Shoot for 25 ideas to start… and it’s fine if your list contains simple foods like pasta, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, tomato soup, sandwiches, salad, etc. You aren’t looking to impress anyone. You just need to feed your family food they will eat!
If you’d like to plan more than just your dinners, make separate lists for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner (or whatever meals you will create a plan for).
If you need help, here’s a bunch of 30-minute meals our family loves… and here are 75+ family-friendly meals on a budget.
You’ll want to keep this list handy for the rest of the steps.
3. Plan meals based on your week.
This is the most important piece of the meal-planning puzzle… because if you don’t plan meals that work with your weekly schedule, you won’t have time to make and/or eat the meals, and your food and time will be wasted.
For example, if you know you need to be somewhere by 6:00 on Tuesday, you can plan an early dinner at 4:45 or 5:00 so you’re finished on time.
Or if you will be gone until 5:30 one day, plan a soup or slow cooker meal so the food is ready when you get home.
If you have a wide open night, that might be a great time to try a new recipe or one that needs to bake/cook for longer. On the other hand, if family members are coming and going all afternoon and evening, it might be best to prepare a variety of wraps or salads that people can just grab as they’re rolling through.
Again, there’s not a “right” or “wrong” way to do this… it just depends on YOUR schedule (which will change from week to week).
Use your list of meals you created above to plan meals based on your weekly schedule. I promise, meal planning will feel like a more valuable resource once you start planning your meals based on your week.
4. Write it down.
Please don’t rely on your memory… write it down.
Whether you’re planning 21 meals for the week, or just 5, you will have a much higher success rate if you write it down.
I write one week’s worth of breakfast and dinner meal plans on our wet-erase calendar every week. This way, I can always check what’s coming up on my menu plan.
AND, most importantly, my kids always know the plan, so they don’t need to ask me 83 times per day!
BONUS TIP: If you prefer to cook from a recipe, it might be helpful to gather all your recipe cards for the week too.
5. Shop and stock your kitchen.
Once you’ve come up with your meal plan AND written it down in a central location, you’ll want to make sure you have the ingredients you need to actually make the meals you’ve planned.
This does not need to be a complicated process with detailed Excel spreadsheets on every ounce of every ingredient you do or do not have in your home.
Instead, do a quick search through your fridge, freezer, and pantry to see what you already have on hand, and then make a list of items you’ll need from the grocery store.
Purchase the items you need (along with any other groceries you want for the week) and enjoy not needing to rush to the store at 5:00 for those last-minute ingredients you just realized you don’t have in the house!
6. Review your plan each day.
One of the quickest ways to blow a meal plan is by not planning ahead to defrost certain items (often the meat).
I suggest looking ahead 12-24 hours. For example, when I’m cleaning up dinner, I prep our breakfast and look ahead to the next night’s dinner to see if anything needs to be defrosted.
I might pull something out of the freezer, chop or mix something that I can make ahead, whip up a batch of pancake batter (one less thing to do in the morning) or just remind myself what I’m making for dinner the following day.
This single step has saved me so many times over the years!
7. Be flexible.
Life happens, and even the most organized meal plan could blow up in your face on a busy day.
Someone gets sick, you get held up at work, a doctor appointment goes late, you forget an important ingredient at the store, etc.
In these situations, my back-up plan is usually pasta, pancakes & eggs, or grilled cheese.
However, there are other times when plans change a day or two in advance, so I might swap a couple of recipes around mid-week.
This is allowed!
REMEMBER: Your meal plan should be a tool that serves you. It should make your life easier. Don’t let yourself get more stressed trying to stick with the plan you made on Saturday, even if your week changed on Wednesday.
More Meal Planning Resources
Want more meal planning ideas, inspiration, and motivation?
Check out 15 years of meal planning posts here!
Do you have any helpful meal planning advice?
JJ says
Using Microsoft Copilot has been a gamechanger for menu planning for me. For fun, I tried this: Can you make a 3 day menu plan for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and snacks using recipes from Andrea Dekker’s blog? Please provide a printable chart and grocery list. And it did! It also gave a link to your blog.
I literally sat in the parking lot and typed something like Give me a menu plan and grocery list for 3 days for a family of 6 with kid friendly meals for 3 meals a day and snacks with no soy, no dairy, and no seafood. Boom! I went into the store, and I bought what I needed. So fast and easy!
You can also use links from all your favorite recipes to do the same thing. You can definitely have fun with it. Copilot will provide a pdf so you can print it if needed.
Andrea says
oh my word — this sounds amazing! I’m in shock that something like this exists!
Thanks so much for sharing… I’m sure other readers will benefit from this too. And I definitely need to try this!
Lisa Rohrssen says
I can’t say enough about how much a love an app on my phone called Paprika. I did have to pay for it but I think it was around 5.00. This has changed everything for me. I have all my recipes with me when I walk into the grocery store so if I find something on sale I can pull up a recipe. You can search the web for them and then add them to your phone. You can add your own. you can change any of them easily and make your own notes.
The best part is the ability to make a grocery list with the touch of a button. From there it is very easy to add and delete items.
I never have to wonder what is for dinner. I have everything with me everywhere I go and I can plan my grocery list anywhere very quickly.
Brenda says
When I make a meal plan, I usually make more of a meal list. I look through the cupboards/freezer and see what recipes I have everything needed to make. These meal I put on a list and hang it on the fridge. Then I know what my options are when it is time to cook. It seems like every time I try to “assign” meals to certain days or prep ahead then something comes up and then that meal isn’t eaten. Or the meal I prepped seems to complicated to make after getting home from work and getting kids from daycare. I guess you could say I do a meal inventory.
It is also helpful for making a grocery list…I know that if I have burger in the freezer then I need buns so then we can have hamburgers for dinner (buns would go on the shopping list).
Also is nice with the kids that I can say, “what should we have for dinner: burgers or spaghetti?” Or whatever meals are on my meal inventory list. Then we don’t end up spending 15 minutes of them requesting meals that I don’t have ingredients for.
Melinda says
I was wondering……when you go grocery shopping for your weekly menu, do you also shop the sales at the grocery store and buy the sale items along with your weekly menu list? And if so, do you still stick to a weekly budget or incorporate the sale items into your weekly budget?
Also, do you still coupon? I know you said at one time you quit couponing as much since having children. I have been trying to get back into couponing and as much as I love it, I also hate it. ha. I hate chasing the deals at different stores. What are your thoughts on couponing?
I guess you would say, I am at a point that I want to save all I can but at the same time it can be so time consuming doing so!
Thanks for all your effort on your blog. I have been reading it for years. I think I discovered it when you first started blogging. I’m a grandma and so enjoy seeing the pictures and stories of your kids! They are so cute!
Thanks ahead of time for any input. 🙂
Aa. says
I don’t know if this”advice” helps you, especially because in my country couponing is not such a big thing (there are so few coupons and only some of the hipermarket offers them and usually few times in a year), but I think that you should stick to 1-2 supermarkets where you coupon for the things that are not perishable if you’re given the opportunity or freezeble foods (meat especially). If not, then you end up paying for gas used to drive betwwen 5 hipermarkets and you actually save less or for food taht does not last.
Andrea says
Good tips — and I would tend to agree 🙂
Melinda says
Thanks for your input! Yes, came to the conclusion to only shop at 2 stores where the best deals are. The stores are close together. It was just the “time” it took to go in a store and check out. I realized my time was worth something too!
Heather @ My Overflowing Cup says
These are great tips! I plan a week at a time, but I also plan all my meals and as many snacks/desserts as possible. I do this because it makes it easier for me to prepare ahead of time. The biggest thing for me is keeping it simple and remaining flexible. I, too, rotate our favorite meals. We don’t get bored easily, either. We’re just happy to eat. The key is to find the system that works best for your family as we are all different. Thanks for the post!
Raquel says
I have been doing a meal plan for years. If I don’t plan the grocery shopping is usually a disaster. One other tip for those who feel a meal plan is too restrictive is to allow yourself to mix up meals. If you are tired today, pop the pizza in or make it your restaurant night. We allow ourselves to swap for what we are feeling through the week.
Debbie says
You described exactly how I’ve been feeling about meal planning. It seems overwhelming and I couldn’t get the hang of it from week to week. I’m a planner so it just seemed weird that this got me stumped. Working outside of the home makes it tough because I can only do most cooking during the weekend. When weekend is filled with other activities such as parties or home projects then there’s less time to prepare the meals in advance. If household chores also need to be done during the weekend then I’m buried. When you posted the 10 Freezer Meals in an Hour I thought I would try it. I looked at the recipes and they seemed simple enough to do and the 1 Hour prep was very appealing. Long story short I did it! It took more than an hour for me probably because I wasn’t familiar with the recipes yet but when it was all done I couldn’t be more proud of myself. It’s been a week since we started eating the fruit of my labor and we still have about 5 meals in the freezer untouched. The recipes were all delicious so far! Thank you for posting that plan, Andrea!!! I’ll definitely do it again, especially when we have company staying with us. Keep posting more of these!
Katherine says
Two things that might help in starting out:
1. Plan a small amount, not every meal for the whole week. I plan for three dinners a week and the other nights are leftovers or eating with friends or…something. Three dinners is not as daunting for me to plan and execute as 7.
2. Some of our friends have set meal types every week. Monday is pasta night, Tuesday is Mexican, Wednesday is soup, etc etc. Less options can be freeing!
Viv says
Planning what to eat each night and an organized shop would not be hard for me (I’m tres organised usually) to do but it’s the ideas for the meals that I have trouble coming up with. I therefore end up wandering around the supermarket aimlessly waiting for inspiration to hit me. That usually ends up with lots of bits and pieces in my basket an no concrete ingredients for the week so I always end up back at said supermarket the next day. Or I cook the same things over, and over and over. Anyone got any tips on healthy recipe inspiration that they use (I know there are thousands of sites out there..) but I’d just like maybe a list of 5x meals per week that I can dip into – I don’t mind some one else suggesting what I eat. Thanks peeps! (Oh, and to Andrea for the post…). Viv
Aa. says
I don’t know if that is your case, but I was feeling overwhelmed when reading the recipes, so I 1) prefer to watch youtube recipes, check Laura in the kicthen or 2) search images on internet.
I think you are appealed by images (you go in the supermarket, so the visual aspect helps you), so why not try to search photos just by searching “easy meal” or “budget friendly meals” or “30 minutes meals”. Than take the inspirations from the photos and create your own recipe, adjust it to your own taste, even in writing, and you will create a set of recipes.
Viv says
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: I’m a designer so images appeal much more to me than reading the initial recipie. I’ll give that a whirl…
Ta muchly! Viv
Emily says
I have found so many new meals via Pinterest. They usually have delicious looking pictures with the recipes. I do the same thing as Andrea with meal planning and try to throw in one new recipe every week or two. Keeps things fresh and helps my family to enjoy new things while still making our favorite meals on a regular basis. I’m usually shopping with my four kiddos. If I don’t go with a plan (shopping list usually categorized by how the store is laid out) I end up with tons of unneeded food and I forget half of what I actually needed. 🙂 Hope you find some great new recipes to try out!
Aa. says
You’re welcome! 🙂
Cathy H says
Thank you for this. I really got off track on meal planning this summer but we have just sold our home and have to find a new home and move in less than 30 days so I have been working on a meal plan this week to use up what we have in the house. I have tried to come up with simple, quick dinners for the rest of the month to save us from resorting to fast food, saving us money, and cleaning out our freezers and cabinets. Thanks for the perfect timing with this post!
Stephanie says
For me, meal planning goes through stages. Probably because my life changes often. :). One week my husband will be home for dinner 7 nights, the next only 3. Spring I plan on only 3 nights with him home, but I also need to have something for him to quick eat when he gets home later.
Then I think I have it all planned out and I am doing really well and my 5 year old starts being hungry every 10 minutes. And then things change again. It definitely helps keep me from running extra trips to the store, even if my plan doesn’t work perfectly. The weeks I have done no plan are usually me running to the gas station near our house or calling my hubby and asking him to stop. 🙂
Now if only we didn’t get bored eating and making the same foods…..then my grocery bill could be even cheaper!
Martha says
I have been planning using your method for the last 4 months. I was so scared at first but now I love it! We got back from vacation and I miss planning for a week and it’s been so crazy how much more stressful it is. Meal planning really does help!
Andrea says
so glad my meal planning tips have been working for you! It is a little intimidating to get started, but everyone I talk to (any my own personal experiences) says life is MUCH less stressful with a little meal planning!!
Kim says
Great timing for this post! We just got back from a week long vacation and need to get back on track for meals…:)
Kathryn says
Thank you for posting this! It’s very similar to what I do but it’s given me some ideas on what I can do to change or improve the process. I’ve started to dread meal planning but that’s probably due to a very picky 7 year old.