Menu Plans

EASY MENU PLANS FOR FAMILIES

Easy meal plans that are tried & true family favorite recipes and kid-friendly. Use this menu plan to help jump start you for your own weekly planning, or follow it day by day and have it all ready for you! I personally love to menu plan and make grocery lists, and scour the internet for new recipes to try, so let me do the work for you!

Here are all my tips and helpful ideas to getting dinner on the table every single night for your own family.

HELPFUL HINTS FOR EASY MEAL PLANNING

Make a list!

I go to each recipe I want to make and write down the things from that recipe that I need to buy. My kitchen is pretty well stocked with all the essentials for baking, spices, seasonings, etc. So usually the things on my list are fresh produce, meats, and canned ingredients.

Once you have written down the ingredients you need either make a grocery pick-up order (my favorite!) OR keep it in list form and take it shopping with you to the store. 

Schedule Dinner for Certain Nights

Depending on what your schedule looks like coordinate dinner plans for how busy that particular night is. We have about 3 nights per week that I know I either need dinner to be really quick or I need to put something in the crockpot so it’s ready to eat when we are.

My other helpful tip that has helped me so much is to buy several plastic storage bins (like pantry storage bins) and place the non-perishable ingredients, for that particular recipe, along with the printed recipe inside the bin. This way, you have the recipe ready to go and most of the ingredients. I don’t know about you but I always seem to make a list at the beginning of the week and by the time the day comes around, I have no clue what I planned to make for that day. The plastic pantry bins totally solve this dilema!

Look Ahead at The Week!

There will be some nights that you just have to get take-out or hit the drive-thru. No shame in that! I do it more often than I care to admit. I say this because you don’t want to buy all your perishable items too far ahead of time, like meats and vegetables. 

Print Out Each Recipe

This is probably my #1 tip for menu planning. Print the recipes out! It seems so simple but it will save you so much time. Do you ever figure out dinner and then when it comes time to make it you’re like where is this from? Pinterest. A blog? And then you can’t find it. It happens to me all the time. Print the recipe out at the beginning of the week and leave them in your kitchen or pantry. That way you know exactly what the recipe is and it will be right there for you.