How do you plan weekly dinners for your family?

I plan my dinner menu on Sundays, then go shopping for the week. This seems to work well and keep me from overspending on groceries.

I usually have staples on hand and shop weekly for add-on items. I usually stick with what my kids like year-round and I vary depending on the season. I live on salads in the Summer and warm soups in the Winter!

Some weeks it's hard to motivate myself to do it, but I am good about coming up with a full list of dinner plans each weekend for the week ahead. It takes more time than I'd like (I'm working on trying to simplify meal choices!) but I find that it makes the week run much more smoothly when I don't need to decide on dinner every night, and it allows me to go to the grocery store only once. It also helps me to make better use of what I already have on hand so not as much food goes to waste. The weeks where I wing it every night are always difficult!

The struggle is definitely real with the meal planning. I try to plan 5 dinners on Saturday/Sunday and shop on Sunday. Then I have a strategy of what to serve every night. Some form of pasta and some form of tacos are on the menu every week. I’m guilty of trying too many new recipes so sometimes dinner is a bust. I definitely like the idea of one grocery store trip (although we always seem to run out of something mid-week).

I used to be so good about planning meals, but lately my husband and I have been winging it! This is a good reminder to get back to planning--it helps the budget and maintains happy bellies!

My meal planning became super easy when my kids became picky. Now we rotate pizza, pasta, plainish chicken, meatballs, chicken nuggets, taco, and sausage. With a veggie side and rice/naan/sweet potatoes. It bores me to tears, so my husband and I will order out or very occasionally I'll motivate to make something for us, but it's hard to do that on top of their simple meals.

I do my shopping on Sunday and, before going to the store, I try to plan a few meals for the week, counting on leftovers for a couple of days as well.

I have been desperately searching for a meal-planning method that reconciles my husband’s super-particular tastes and my desire to eat mostly plant-based. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the entire 7 years we’ve been married! But I recently hit on something that’s actually working (knock on wood): we sat down and came up with 14 simple meals we could agree on...Meals that could be slightly modified to suit us both and wouldn’t be too difficult or expensive or time-consuming. When we finally had our list, I wrote them each on a mini post it note and put them in the back of my planner. Now I can just pull out my stickies and place them on each day of the week, and we don’t have to repeat meals more than every two weeks!

One of my goals for the new year is to be better about meal planning. Whenever I've done this successfully in the past, I've seen so many benefits. Fewer trips to the grocery store and less food wasted overall. Of course, fewer trips to the grocery store also means fewer impulse purchases so it is a good money saving strategy as well!

This sounds way too OCD, but I have a menu template I use where I plan what we're going to have for dinner each night on one side and on the other side I write down any ingredients I need to buy to make those dinners. I add those items to any other things that I've already got on my grocery list to buy for the week. It keeps me on track and typically from buying too many extra items.

If I don't meal plan before shopping, we inevitably end up eating out throughout the week. I find that meal planning makes grocery shopping easier (and cheaper) and gives me a good foundation for our weekly meals.