I love back to school. I always have. The new notebooks, the new pens and pencils and especially the routine of it all. During the summer, I take a break from meal planning and really enjoy the schedule-free days and longer nights, but now that we are back to the school year and early bedtimes, I find myself wanting (and needing) to be more organized with food. As much as I would like to be, I am not great at meal prepping as weekends tend to slip away, but I am getting a lot better at meal planning.
On Saturday mornings, I take my cup of tea, pen, paper and pile of cookbooks (or the computer for all you tech-savvy folk) and spend 10 minutes planning out breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for the week. These 10 minutes end up saving not only grocery bills (as I am able to make a list and stick to it), but also so. much. time. Time that I don’t have to spend figuring out what to make for school lunches, time that I don’t have to feel like a short order cook in the morning, and time that I don’t spend feeling frazzled when the kids get home because I have no idea what’s for dinner. And even though the main purpose of my chart is to plan for the school/work week ahead, I find that having meals/snacks written down is huge on the weekends, where if left to their own devices, my kids would just keep grazing on snacks all day long.
Your meal chart doesn’t have to be anything too fancy–I started out with just a blank piece of paper and pen, but if you are looking for a template, I designed this super simple one that I love because I can just tack it up in the kitchen so everyone knows what to expect.
WeeklyMealPlanChart-RiversideNutrition
Click the link above for charting help and happy planning everyone!
