I’ve always hated making dinner. This one aspect of being a mom/wife has taken away more of my reading time than any other household chore. First you have to prep the food, then cook the food and after everyone else gets to enjoy the food you have to clean up the mess. But, as lazy as I am and as much as I dislike the thought of all that work and all that cleaning, those were not the things I hated most about making dinner. What I hated most was deciding what to make.
I felt like I had been making the same meals for the last 18 years. I was tired of the same thing every night. I was tired of always having to be the one to decide what we were going to have for dinner. I decided it was time for my family to help.
I sat down and made a list of all of the meals I had made that my family liked. I kept the list on the kitchen table and every time I remembered something else, I wrote it down. My family got involved too, adding to the list as they remembered meals they enjoyed. Before long we had about 50 meals to choose from.
After I felt we had the list pretty much complete I made everyone pick 3 things they wanted for dinner in the next 2 weeks. There are 5 people in my family and since I hate shopping I decided I would do the grocery shopping every 2 weeks. Yes, that leaves one extra meal but sometimes I let someone (me) get away with only choosing 2 meals if they aren’t feeling inspired. Sometimes I carry something over to the next week or have a nice weekend lunch.
When I came up with this idea, I just wanted to get everyone else to help decide what we were going to have for dinner. I got way more than that, though. Because I knew what we were going to be eating for the next 2 weeks it was easy to do my grocery shopping for 2 weeks at a time. I wrote down the meals we were going to have, made a list of ingredients I would need, checked what I had on hand and soon had a complete grocery list. I hate shopping, so being able to minimize my grocery shopping to twice a month has been great.
The most unexpected benefit of this has been the money we save on groceries. I usually go to Wal-Mart. I don’t by produce or meat there, but for everything else… their prices are often much cheaper and they price match so as long as it’s not a % off or buy one get one I get the same deals and only have to go to one store. AND, I’m not having to run to the store every night for one thing that ends up costing me $20 or more because I impulse buy. We probably only spend two thirds of our old grocery budget, if not half, buy shopping once every 2 weeks.
And this has definitely made dinner time easier. I don’t have to think so hard about what to make because the thinking was done for me, and I don’t have to run to the store because I already have everything I need. I still have to cook and clean up, but compared to the hassle dinner used to be, that’s nothing. (And many times my husband will clean up for me which makes me very happy) I almost enjoy making dinner now because I’m so proud of myself for planning ahead.
If you’d like to try this, here are a few tips that will make things a little easier on you:
- If you run into situations where several people pick the same meal you can run it like a draft. Instead of everyone giving you there 3 or 4 meal choices, have them each choose one thing, no duplicates, then go to round 2 etc. You can rotate from week to week who goes first.
- Make meals with breads and fresh produce at the beginning of the week, either your shopping week or the next week. Just make one quick trip to the store to get the fresh ingredients in the middle of the 2 week cycle.
- Other than placing the meals with fresh ingredients at the beginning of the week, don’t worry too much about what night you’ll eat a particular meal. If there’s a day you know you’re going to be home late, plan a crock-pot meal for that night, otherwise just go down the list and write Mon. Tues. Wed. etc. next to each recipe. Check the night before to make sure it’s not a crock-pot recipe that needs to be started in the morning but other than that, you really don’t have to worry about it.
Weekly meal plans aren’t new. I always loved the idea but had a hard enough time coming up with one night’s dinner; I couldn’t bear the thought of coming up with 14 at once. And they always seemed so complicated, with lots of steps and charts… I don’t have time for that. I think this plan is super easy but I know everyone has their own style and what’s easy for me may not be easy for you. Give this a try and let me know – Has this changed dinner time at your house or is there something about it that isn’t working for you? Have you modified this in some way to better suit your family? I’d love to hear your experiences.
