I kept mine pretty simple. I have seen some impressive, but possibly little over the top, meal planners on Pinterest. Don't get me wrong, I love a cute, bright, colorful planner like the next household diva. That is why I spend a little extra on cute 3 ring binders though. Ink costs way too much to have an intricate and colorful meal planner that I have to print a year's worth of!
Also, the meal planners I have seen are laid out for a week's worth of meals and have written down for Sunday-Saturday. It's pretty good for those that plan a week's meal at a time and like to have the day's meal planned exactly. In this house, sometimes we just aren't in the mood for the spaghetti that we have planned for Thursday, and instead want the roast planned for Saturday. This is why I just wrote down a list of 2 weeks worth of meals. It ends up on the meal chalkboard anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter, except to my planning OCD it does matter. HA!
So keeping it simple, here's the pages for my binder
I have 15 lines on mine to plan for 2 weeks of meals
I like to shop from the back of the store and work my way to the front,
so this isn't really laid out quite right, but while choosing recipes I write down the ingredients I need to buy as I go. Which means the first thing on the recipes list is meat.
I don't always have to buy household and other items is why I kept this list separate from the actual groceries. I usually buy all the household things at the same time,
unless I run out which is maybe only one or two things that are necessary.
Just a sample of meals. I also put little notes on the bottom that I may need to do
or would like to try out.
See... pretty simple. 3 hole punch everything, put in a binder, and done! I put a single page divider in front of the "Meals for weeks of" page so you can flip right to your menu as needed instead of trying to search for it. I also put clear page protectors in the back of the binder for when I have a printed out recipe that I need to put in there. This way I don't have to search for a recipe.
I also had an idea this morning while hole punching 60 pages... How often do we try a new recipe that you just hope your family will enjoy?! I do at least once a week it seems. Highlight that new recipe if the family likes it so you know it was a keeper, or put a big fat line through those "Epic Fail" recipes! Have a brain blockage trying to come up with meal ideas? Flip back though your binder and find a few meals that you made in the past. The binder has so many uses!
Planned and ready to attack dinner!
Carrie Danilla Linn
*Note that several planners you see on Pinterest have the menu and grocery list on the same page. I don't do this for a few a reasons. 1. I have a large meal list. 2. My grocery list usually gets written on, torn, partially eaten (the kid...not me trying to avoid buying extra unneeded snacks bc I haven't had lunch yet), and sometimes lost after grocery shopping. No one wants to lose their meal list! Trust me its horrible to have all these groceries and not know what you were going to make with them!
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