5 Tips To Make Meal Planning Easier

Heather Dessinger

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meal planning tips

If you’ve tried meal planning before and didn’t love it, please know that there are dozens of ways to do it and many of them are very hard, very tedious, and very boring. We are not going to talk about THOSE ways. 🙂

Instead I’m going to share my top five tips for simplifying your routine without landing in a food rut. First, though, let’s take a quick look at some of the reasons you might want to give meal planning another shot.

Save Time

If you’ve ever found yourself staring at the contents in your fridge with the hope that somehow the random assortment of ingredients will inspire you, you know that inspiration is often in short supply when you’re tired or distracted.

Meal prep often takes longer because you have to spend extra time pulling things out and trying to figure out how to use them together.

Plus, if you pull up a recipe at the last minute and need to google three or four substitutions to make it work, you also know that the results can be very disappointing.

Save Money

Buying just the ingredients you’ll need (and not a bunch of random ones that you won’t) reduces waste and your grocery bill. You can find more tips for saving money on groceries here.

Eat Healthier

When you’ve planned easy, delicious and healthy meals you’re less likely to end up eating convenient (but less nutritious) options.

With that in mind, here are a few tips that I’ve found helpful for creating (and keeping) things running smoothly in the kitchen:

1. Only plan as many meals as you want to

Don’t feel like you have to plan every meal. I typically only plan dinners because I have a solid set of breakfast recipes that can be easily made on the fly. Lunch is usually covered, too. We’ll talk more about that later in this post.

If you want to plan everything, go for it. However, if dinners are where you really feel the crunch, start by just planning those and focus on quick, healthy meals. You can always add lunch or dinner later if you want to.

2. Try theme nights

Italian night, Taco Tuesday, Soup & Sandwich Night, Breakfast For Dinner, Slow Cooker Sunday . . . you get the idea.

A nightly theme provides opportunities for structured creativity – it takes the pressure off making a plan from scratch, but you’re not locked in to a particular recipe for each theme. There’s room for flexibility based on how much time you have that week, and what sounds good to you.

3. Use Real Plans

If you want to simplify the process, Real Plans is the ultimate meal planning tool.

No more old school static printouts filled with recipes that may not even interest you. Real Plans allows you to pick your style of eating (Paleo, Keto, Whole30, Gluten-Free, etc.), remove ingredients you want to avoid, limit options to what fits your timetable, replace any suggested recipe that doesn’t interest you, and import any favorites you want to add to your rotation.

You can also decide how many meals you want to plan for each week and adjust portions to fit your family size, then all you do is press a button and VOILA.

The meal planning is all done in an instant, and Real Plans generates a shopping list sorted by grocery department that you can access from your phone while you’re at the store.

Get started here for as little as $6/ month

4. Cook Once, Eat Twice

Doubling or tripling a recipe is a huge time-saver because you get multiple meals from a single food prep session. Pull out the necessary ingredients and equipment only once, plus there’s only one set of pots, pans, measuring spoons, etc. to wash.

After a few extra moments to measure out a second (or third) batch, you’ve got extra for the week. Here are some practical ways to implement this technique:

Instead of roasting one whole chicken for dinner, roast two. Use the second chicken you’ve prepped in advance to make sandwiches, homemade chicken soup, chicken tortilla soup, coconut lime chicken curry soup, chicken salad, lettuce wraps and more.

One of my favorite recipes to double is paleo bread. I make it in advance, then pre-slice and freeze. When errands run longer than expected and we get home late, I make sandwiches for dinner.

Make a double batch of condiments like this easy ketchup and homemade mayo. They can be served as-is or become a base for other recipes. For example, the ketchup can be used to make sloppy joe stuffed peppers or quickly turned into barbecue sauce for livening up a roast chicken or shredded pot roast.

Mayo can be served over burgers or turned into a quick tartar sauce, chipotle mayo, or homemade ranch dressing. Other recipes that usually work well with batch cooking are: Roasts, soups, stews, and casseroles.

Tip: Only double or triple batches when you know you love the recipe. I’ve used this technique before with recipes I mistakenly thought my family would enjoy, and it was really difficult to get rid of the leftovers.

5. Keep It Simple

You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.” – Julia Child

My husband still teases me about my one of my first real food experiments – a fancy goat cheese pizza. One bite and he quickly reached for a glass of red wine to wash it down. I should probably mention that he hates red wine. . . he just hated that pizza more. (He did eat it, though. I love him for that!)

Over the years I’ve learned that simple foods can be just as satisfying as complicated, gourmet meals. That’s why quick recipes like egg drop soup, lettuce tacos, and “breakfast for dinner” items like scrambled eggs, frittatas, pancakes, and waffles are my go-to options when I need a quick Plan B (or C, or D).

6. Embrace the power of “good enough.”

While it’s great to strive for every meal to be balanced, sometimes it doesn’t turn out that way. In my house there are times when the pickle on a sandwich counts as the vegetable for our meal, and that’s okay. Keep good things in your fridge and it will all even out over the course of the week.

Did I miss anything? Share your tips in the comments below!

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About HEATHER

Heather is a holistic health educator, herbalist, DIYer, Lyme and mold warrior. Since founding Mommypotamus.com in 2009, Heather has been taking complicated health research and making it easy to understand. She shares tested natural recipes and herbal remedies with millions of naturally minded mamas around the world. 

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12 thoughts on “5 Tips To Make Meal Planning Easier”

  1. What a great post! I have some of the same routines. I also have my cleaning schedule broken down into a two week rotation so that I only have to clean a little each day and it all gets cleaned every two weeks. This feels much less overwhelming to me then having one huge marathon cleaning day each week.

    Reply
    • Kandace – I love the idea of a rotated cleaning schedule. Since our house is on the market right we clean everything all the time, but whenever we move I am definitely setting this up!

      Reply
  2. I’m so glad you said you organize your shopping list by where things are in the store! I do that too but when I tell people, they look at me like I’ve just grown a spare limb. That is until I tell them that the first time I did it, I saved 30 minutes and $30 (from fewer impulse purchases.)

    Reply
    • So true, Melinda. I think it’s really good advice not to grocery shop while you’re hungry for the same reason, but since I am nursing and pregnant I am ALWAYS hungry. Having a well-organized list at least keeps my impulse buys to a minimum ; – )

      Reply
    • Amen sister!
      Most people do not realize that the stores place high price items at eye level and in high traffic areas so that they are kind of pop out at you when you walk by.

      Reply
  3. I also plan meals a week at a time. Very early on a Saturday morning, before everyone in the house rises, I sit and peruse my collection cookbooks and recipes to decide what I will cook during the week. I don’t mind spending my time this way, because I love to read cookbooks and recipes. I then select 5-6 easy meals that I can make within 30 each night, and write out my grocery list after checking my pantry for what I already have on hand. For me, meal planning is an important part of what I do for my family. I enjoy cooking and feeding them healthy, delicious foods. So it’s a win-win in our household.

    Reply
    • A way to organize your meals you can place all the non-perishables in a basket or small tote & just put a post note inside so you know what all this is for.
      I.E.
      Monday
      Can of carrots
      Box of noodles
      With a post note list your perishable
      items & meal.
      Tuesday
      # of potatoes to make mash or bake
      Can of green beans.
      Post note list your perishable items
      & meal.
      This can all be done while you’re doing your meal planning. Going through your pantry to see what you have on hand as you find that can of corn or that can of green beans; you just place it in your tote or your basket and voila you’re done.

      Reply
    • Wow, Melodie. Thank you! I was writing a blog when I found this but now I feel so good and relaxed by the warm fuzzies I got that I can’t think straight ; – ) Going to go beg for a foot massage from the hubs to perfect the experience. Thanks for making my day!

      Reply
  4. Im a young housewife with my first baby on the way. (Doing a home-birth, cloth diapering, and BF)
    I just recently accomplished the HELPFUL task of meal planning, I usually just buy staples for breakfast and lunch with leftovers in the mix and spend a couple hours planning about 15 meals. (Paycheck to paycheck) ANYWAY, how can I be sure that my meals are balanced and nutritious? Any tips/blogs/sites? I’m 19 and was raised by my Dad who never cooked…so when I got married I was starting all of this craziness 😉 from scratch. Thanks.

    Reply
  5. I have *the* hardest time with meal planning of any kind. It was never something my mother did growing up, she just made whatever she decided to make that night. So, for me, the thought in the back of my mind is am I going to want to eat that night what I planned a week ago? And thus, no planning ever happens. I also do not really know how to cook much, so I feel I don’t have much of a recipe pool to pull from. I have signed up for the Real Food for Busy People class, so maybe things will get easier!
    I also get a lot of my food from a kind of farm co-op where I have to order things a week ahead of time, which means if I want to use stuff from the farm, I need to know way ahead of time what I will be making! Kinda hard on the meal planning as well.

    Reply
  6. 5 stars
    I don’t ordinarily do meal planning, but I’m starting to more lately. I’m making a list of what we eat. Then I’m going to make a list of what I need for each meal. That’s my goal for 2021 is to do more meal planning. I don’t Cook near as much as hubby does. I’m hoping to get him on board with the meal planning, too.

    Reply