Menu Planning for the Unorganized Soul

Well I know you're all on the edge of your seats waiting for me to reveal my fabulous, brilliant, never-before-seen Menu Planning secrets!

I'm afraid you might be disappointed by this post, but I'll write it anyway because I promised.

I'm sure you've all seen those perfect menu planning strategies on other blogs and on pinterest. I have too. I've drooled over them and even had dreams about them. I've longed to have printed labels, color coding, lots of different sized containers, several charts, and over 100 meals involved in my menu-planning process.

Here's the deal, friends: I try really hard to be a super organized person, and it never works (ask anyone who's ever lived with me), so I have to do what works for my family me.

This is the simplest way I have found to plan menus for my family. If it doesn't work for you, find something that does, and do it.

As much as I HATE menu-planning, it IS a necessary evil, and it does make my life easier in the long run. And this method makes me hate it a little less.

These are the materials I use:

-A binder. Get whatever size you think you'll need. I think mine is 2 inches. I also got the kind with the clear pockets on the front and back because I like to shove recipes in there sometimes.

-Dividers. You can buy some or make some, totally up to you.

-Sheet protectors. Or you can laminate your recipes. Or, if you don't tend to use your recipe as a spoon rest while peeling a toddler off your leg, go ahead and be brave and don't protect those pages at all.

-Some sort of menu planning paper. You could make your own on the computer, or you can be lucky amazing like me and find them in the dollar section at Target.

-Pens

-Cookbooks. I have several, but I've been using these 3 the most lately.

-Internet access and a printer. Not required, but we know you're halfway there if you're reading this, and it is very helpful.


Now how do I take all these materials and turn them into a fabulous menu?

1. Decide on some categories for your recipes.

Here are my categories:

-American Food: Kind of a lame name, but this is where you would find chicken pot pie, bbq, etc.

-Mexican Food

-Italian Food

-Asian Food

-Seafood

-Soups/Sides

-Desserts

-Breakfast Food


I don't expect my categories to work for everyone, so come up with your own if you want to. I know some people divide it by the main protein in the meal or the type of preparation. You could scrap categories altogether and alphabetize if you prefer.

The reason these categories work for me is that when I'm planning my menu, I like to make sure we have a variety of flavors to eat and use a variety of ingredients.

2. Start sticking in recipes.

These could be printed from a blog, cut out of a magazine, cut from a box of pasta, copied from a cookbook, handwritten and handed down through generations. Any recipes will do as long as you and your family enjoy eating them!

Put them in the page protectors or laminate them and put them behind the appropriate divider. And yes there will probably be some crossover, but instead of panicking about where to stick the shrimp curry recipe (not that I ever did that), just reassure yourself that you'll find it when you need it in either the Seafood or the Asian Food section.

Then sit back and smile at your beautiful binder!

3. Decide how often to menu-plan.

Think about how often you can make a big grocery shopping trip, and go from there. Some prefer monthly, some weekly. I personally plan our menus every two weeks, right around Mr. M's paydays, so I know I'll be able to stock up on all the yummy ingredients I need.

4. Just DO IT.

If you're anything like me this will be a SLOOOW process at first. You'll sit down with your lovely paper and your fully-functioning pen, but your paper will somehow remain blank. Your mind will cease to remember which recipes you know how to cook, what you've eaten lately, what ingredients you have in your pantry, what your family likes to eat, what produce is in-season, etc.

But, unlike me when I first started, you have the binder! USE it!

When I first started menu-planning I had cookbooks, recipes saved in emails, stuck in drawers, circled in a stack of magazines, swirling around in my brain, not at all organized.

Now the binder makes it easy peasy tolerable. And I always do it happily.

I write the dates on my paper under the days of the week, and decide what we're having for dinner based on what we have going on those days. We do switch days pretty often though.

NOTE: I only plan dinners unless we have something special going on for a breakfast or lunch, or there's some kind of treat we're supposed to take somewhere. Then I just make sure to buy plenty of breakfast and lunch foods to last us until I make the next menu. I often make breakfast and lunch decisions based on sales and coupons. I also don't always plan sides. Sometimes I just write "veggies" and figure it out when I get to the store. Which brings me to the next step...

5. Use your menu to create a shopping list.

Take your menu with you to the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer, and figure out what you already have and what you need to buy in order to make all the things on the menu. PLUS breakfasts, lunches, snacks, any beverages you might need.

If you do your grocery shopping at a mass merchandiser, you might also want to go ahead and take inventory of things like toiletries, medicines, cleaning supplies, and other random stuff your family uses.

When making your shopping list, be sure to think about how long foods stay fresh. If you're going to need lettuce for a salad 2 weeks from now, you'll probably want to pick that up closer to the date that you actually use it. In our family we have to go to the store to get rice milk a couple of times a week, so we get the extra produce on those trips.

6. Try new things.

Actually attempt to make those things on your "recipes" board on pinterest. If you don't like them, throw that recipe out, and use the report cover for something else. I write in my cookbooks to keep track of which ones we've tried and whether we liked them or not.

7. Save those old menus!

The biggest mistake I used to make was throwing out old menus. Then I had to start completely from scratch each time. When you save them, you can look back to get meal ideas and to see what you've eaten recently, so you don't accidentally repeat. Here are my menus from the past few months.

If you made it the bottom of this post, congratulations! I know it was a long one, but I really hope it was helpful! Thanks for reading!