For me, meal planning is one of those life admin tasks that if I don’t do I end up eating things I shouldn’t, or I spend way too long thinking about what my family’s next meal will be.

Over time I’ve managed to streamline my meal planning efforts, so even when I can’t be bothered meal planning, it doesn’t take me long when I do.

Over the long run weekly meal planning actually saves you time, because you don’t have to think about what to cook each night, and you don’t have to make multiple trips to the grocery store to get ingredients.

If you’re interested in planning your meals out on a weekly basis, here are five ways to make meal planning easier.

1 PLAN SIMILAR MEALS FOR BREAKFAST AND LUNCH

I do all of my meal planning on a Google Sheet. I have each day listed across the sheet, and each meal listed down the sheet.

For breakfast and lunch I have two weeks worth of meal plans set up.

Breakfast and lunch for week one looks like this:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Chocolate baked oatmeal
Falafel, hummus, cous cous, beetroot, spinach, cucumber, and red onion salad

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
Toast, avocado, fried egg
Chicken chickpea salad

Sunday
Bacon, eggs, sourdough, baked beans
Lunch out

Breakfast and lunch for week two looks like this:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Apple oatmeal with blueberry compote
Chorizo, cheese, and spinach toastie

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday
Toast, avocado, smoked salmon, feta
Chicken, corn, red bean, lettuce, spring onion, and salsa salad

Sunday
Bacon, eggs, sourdough, baked beans
Lunch out

I just alternate these two plans every week.

2 KEEP A DINNER FAVOURITES LIST

I have a tab on my Google Sheet titled Favourites. On this tab I keep a list of my family’s favourite dinners grouped by key ingredient (see step 3), with links to the website the recipe is located at.

Anytime I cook a dinner that is deemed worthy to cook again, I add it to my Favourites tab. This means that I have a number of different meal options under each key ingredient.

3 FOCUS ON A KEY INGREDIENT FOR DINNER

We eat something different for dinner each night, with the exception of nights that we decide to have leftovers.

Dinners are planned easily as I have a key ingredient that each night’s dinner will be based upon, and the meal is selected from my Favourites tab.

My key ingredients for each night’s dinner are:

Monday
Pasta

Tuesday
Chicken

Wednesday
Quick (any meal that’s premade, for example boxed fish, or takes less than 30 minutes to cook)

Thursday
Something new (something that’s not on my Favourites tab. If it’s worth cooking again it’s added to the Favourites tab).

Friday
Pizza

Saturday
Meat

Sunday
Longer meal (any meal that takes longer to cook, for example stews or curries)

If I’m planning dinner for a Monday night, I know the key ingredient is pasta. This means I’ll go to my Favourites tab, choose one of the meals listed under pasta, and put it in my Monday dinner plan.

Some pasta meals I have listed on my Favourites tab are:

Creamy chicken and mushroom pasta
Penne alfredo with bacon and sundried tomato
Pasta with sausages, fennel seed, and mozzarella ragù
Spinach and chorizo red pesto penne

4 DO A REGULAR FOOD STOCKTAKE

There are times when a planned meal isn’t cooked, because maybe we go out unexpectedly, or we decide to have leftovers.

This means that I will have unused ingredients in my fridge, freezer, or cupboards.

To ensure that I use these ingredients up, around every couple of weeks I’ll write down everything that’s in my fridge, freezer, and cupboards, and make sure that I choose recipes for the following week that have these ingredients in them.

Doing a food stocktake like this means that I have less food wastage, and can decrease my grocery bills a little bit as I don’t buy ingredients I already have.

5 DEDICATE TIME TO PLAN YOUR WEEKLY MEALS

Choose a time during the week where you can spend some time planning your weekly meals.

Wednesday nights are when I do my weekly meal planning, and to ensure that it gets done I have it as a weekly task in my bullet journal.

I hope these ideas make meal planning easier for you, and allow you to spend more time eating your meals rather then thinking about them.

Do you have any ways to make weekly meal planning easier?