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This post about Meal Planning is my #3 most popular post of all time. I find it especially handy when January rolls around and I’m focusing on getting organized for the new year!
Today I am pleased to be hosting a guest blogger, Amy, from Lissiegirl Blogs. She’s a mom of 4, homeschool maniac and quilter. Well, I’m sure she’s much more than that 🙂 For example, insanely organized when it comes to binders and notebooks! She recently completed a new binder designed to make meal planning quick and easy and is going to share it with all of us today!
Meal Planning Made Easy
Having a baby changes everything! Most notably, time. Well, when the ladies from church stopped bringing dinners, and after all of the frozen meals had been consumed, it was finally time to hit the grocery store. Then that lack of time became blatantly obvious. Gone were the days of curling up with some tea, the laptop and a notebook, and taking my sweet time. Helloooo to scribbling the same ol’ ten meals on a 3×5 card while the baby “sleeps” and hoping I remember all the ingredients – and everything else I need-while at the grocery store! No, really, that happened!! lol! Yeah, after that fiasco, I told my husband there had to be a happy medium. I needed a way to come up with a varied, tw0-week menu of decent meals, in a quick and baby-on-the-hip friendly manner. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a pin for that!! Not only does it save me LOADS of time, but it keeps us from eating the same thing over and over, and it satisfies my obsession with planners and binders – bonus! So, I went to the original blog, Homemade By Carmona, downloaded the templates, tinkered a bit, and came up with my awesome Meal Planning Binder. Download the templates from Homemade by Carmona here.
Here’s a step by step visual of what I did:
Step One: I gathered up my supplies. I went with what I had on hand-sheet protectors! Since I use these repeatedly for sheet music, I buy the sturdy, name brand, “non glare” kind and they worked perfectly! I also pulled an empty binder from the home school closet, used my favorite Sharpie pen
& picked up some Post-its (the larger “page marker” style)
from Staples. (affiliate links)
Step Two: I went to Homemade by Carmona, downloaded the pages & customized them to my preferences. For instance, since there are 36 spaces to the 2-page spread, I took the “Weekly Menu” page & printed out one that says “Monthly Meal Planning”. That way, when I start Once-A-Month shopping, I have a section to plan out for the entire month. I also removed all of the “sub categories” from each of the pages….I’m not *that* OCD. lol That’s what’s so great about this – it’s completely customizable! You can even change the type & color of the font! Have fun with it!
Step Three: I grabbed my favorite recipes! I keep a stack in my cookbook cupboard and, of course, my boards on Pinterest. I also keep a digital family cookbook that I can update regularly and access on my phone. You can get the free templates for that family cookbook here.
Step Four: Start filling in the binder! I simply wrote the name of each recipe on the post-it and placed it in it’s correct section. The photos above & below are my “Dinner Ideas” section. I color coded them to keep them organized. Blue for normal stove-top or oven cooking, orange for crock-pot meals & yellow for soups. I also have a page for breakfast (yellow) & a page for lunch (pink).
Here’s my “Dessert Ideas” section.
Once the post-its were all filled in, the rest was so easy! All I had to do, was take the post-its from the “Menu Idea” pages and transfer them to the “Weekly Menu” section. (Each page is one full week of Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner spaces.) I did one week at a time, grabbing breakfast post-its, then lunch, then dinner, and then did the same, on the other page, for the next week. How easy is that?!
VOILA! The finished product! You can see why the color-coding helps. There is zero confusion as to what type of meal you are preparing! So, what used to take me at least an hour, literally took less than a minute! Incredible!! Well worth the time & effort of creating the binder. AND since it’s completely customizable, I will be making sections for appetizers, side dishes and potlucks. The possibilities are endless!
Thank you, Homemade by Carmona for the templates and inspiration to create what works for me!
Now that you’ve seen what works for me when it comes to meal planning, check out what works for me when it comes to my family calendar!
- Chocolate Orange Cookies - November 2, 2024
- Nutella Banana Bread - October 14, 2024
- Bacon Onion Dip - September 13, 2024
Sue Gardiner says
I am really loving this system. I have a set of stickies for fall/winter dishes and a separate set for spring/summer dishes. It makes it easy to choose menu items without repeating too often (once made, the stickies go on a “holding” page” for a couple of weeks). And even better, since we often have last-minute schedule changes, I can easily swap meals around (one that can be made in 30 minutes on a day I discover we won’t get home til late instead of the hour-long of prep that I had planned). Or if I end up serving leftovers, that day’s planned meal just goes back in the rotation for another week.
Nicole Burkholder says
That’s a great idea for variety- you don’t want heavy meals in the middle of summer, but you also don’t want to forget about those winter favorites!
Brandie says
I love this idea. However, what do you do with the recipes to the dishes and how do you correspond them with the sticky notes? Thanks
Nicole Burkholder says
Print out the recipes (or copy them if they are from a book) and keep them in divided sections in the binder. The recipe name is what you’d right on the sticky note. So if you have “Taco Pie” down for dinner this week, you’d turn to whatever section you have that recipe in (dinner recipes, beef recipes, etc.) and find the recipe for Taco Pie. You can decide how detailed to make the recipe sections. I keep them pretty basic-Dinner recipes, desserts, breakfast, etc.
Margo says
I like your use of the larger sticky-notes. I cut mine in half to be like Ursula’s (Carmona post) but there wasn’t enough sticky to keep the little strips on my pages. Your larger notes would give the added sticky needed. Thanks for this little tweak! M <.
Nicole Burkholder says
I like a little more room to write, too! 🙂
Diane taber says
Hi just want to get organised with our finances goals and budgeting journaling and planning and also combining projects we want to do in the future
Chandra says
This is brilliant! I have been racking my brain on trying to come up with a system for meal planning. This is going to be a game changer. Thanks for sharing this great idea.
Lisa says
Hi!! I am so excited to start meal planning/prepping! Thank you for such great ideas! Do you have a printable of the meal planning guide templates that you made? Thank you in advance!!
Nicole Burkholder says
The link in the post is where I got the printables. I don’t have the one that adjusted to personalize for my family, but here is where you can find the whole system to download. You can download and customize your own templates here: http://www.homemadebycarmona.com/menu-planner/
Good luck and have fun! 🙂
Lisa says
Do you have YOUR already customized meal planning guide, printable? Or in a PDF you could share?
Sarah Kaser says
I had been trying a similar idea already but it wasn’t quite right and needed tweaking. For one, my monthly calendar was too high and hard to reach My system was also one to use with post-it notes and move them back and forth like yours, only I really hadn’t figured out a place to put them when not in use. The ideas was there, just not all the logistics, like yours. I’ve reorganized my wall so its more accessible. I’m so excited to finally have a way to make this system better. I’ve not been a very good meal provider lately due to lack of organization. I’ts 7:00 am and already made up all my categories that I need. I ended up just making my own templates. Thank you soo soo much for the inspiration, Nicole!!
Nicole Burkholder says
I’m so glad you’ve figured out a system that works for you! Meal planning can be such a pain (it seems to take FOREVER!) but it makes the rest of the week/month go so much more smoothly. Plus, it saves you a fortune in last minute runs to the grocery store or through the drive-thru! 🙂
Ruth James says
So, explain further. You already have/know the recipes and therefore the post its are a tickler system? You choose your meal/recipe/menu from what you have on hand or according to whats on sale? Do you coordinate meal planning with your shopping? Do you shop every week for the week or do you bulk shop and then plan accordingly? Thank you in advance.
Nicole Burkholder says
Yes- you populate the printable templates with recipe titles on the post-its. I’ll either choose recipes I always make and know completely (like tacos, or sloppy joes) or I’ll choose a recipe I want to try from Pinterest or a magazine. The post-it note just has the title of the recipe on it. If I need to refer back, I’ll search my Pinterest boards for that title.
When it switches over to a new week (I shop and plan for two weeks as much as possible, but at the very least it’s one week) then I pull out the post-its for the recipes I want to make that week. Usually when I’m choosing the recipes, I’m working with what’s already on hand. That’s most often how I choose my menu-what do I already have? I will shop for exactly what I need and then also add a few pounds of whatever is on sale to keep in the freezer for a meal the next week. Does that make sense?
Michelle says
Where can i find a download version. Clicking on the link doesnt work. Page not found. 🙁 can u email me a copy? [email protected]. thanks. So looking fwd to this.
Michelle
Nicole Burkholder says
It opened fine for me- I scrolled down and opened the PDF’s of the different pages, too. Maybe it was a temporary outage. http://www.homemadebycarmona.com/menu-planner/ try going via this link instead. 🙂