Free Printable Flexible Meal Planning Guide

Do you hate that 5:00 question as much as I do?  You know the one…”what’s for dinner?”  That of course is followed by the obligatory “dinner dance” of opening the pantry, fridge, and freezer, and staring blankly.  It’s almost like I expect our meal ingredients to light up with a neon sign and sing a little song – “use meeee to make the perfect dinner tonight!” Alas, that has yet to happen.  But a mom can hope, can’t she?

Last year, amidst the organization rush of New Year’s Resolution and frustrated with that question, I created a Meal Planning Guide as part of our family’s Command Center, and it has truly been a life saver for me.

Here’s an excerpt from that post:

I will freely admit, I am someone that feels stifled by too much organization. Don’t get me wrong, I “ooh” and “aah” over flawless labels on beautiful containers…or command centers with a place for everything…or spotless pantries with cans stacked perfectly…or weekly cleaning schedules with chalkboard checklists.  I admire them, but that’s just not realistic to me.  And when I try to attain something like that, I feel really great for the day or two that it actually works…then feel like crap when I get behind on keeping it up and discouragement sets in.  I prefer something in between chaos and perfect order that’s a little closer to reality – methods of organization that make it easier to stay on top of the mess rather than fall behind it.  For me, that’s something with a little bit of wiggle room for life to happen.  That’s how this menu planning board was born!  {read more}

You see, I didn’t like the meal-assigned-to-each-day method of meal planning…what if I didn’t feel like making chicken on Tuesday?  Or I had a horrible day and just want to pick up a pizza?  Or we got an invite for dinner at my parent’s house?  This method of meal planning is still organized, but a little less rigid.  Here’s how it works: I’ve got little tags printed with my dinner “repertoire” that I pick out and put on the magnet board as I make my grocery list each week.  That way, I have 6 meals that I know I have the ingredients on-hand to prepare.  No more staring blankly into the pantry at 5 pm!  Of course, there are weeks that I may not get to my planning and shopping until Tuesday or Wednesday…and some weeks that I don’t get around to it at all…but it’s a really useful tool for me when I do use it, no matter what day of the week it is!

As terrific as the menu board has been, I decided to take it a bit further and make a binder out of it.  I’ve definitely fallen down on my meal planning since the baby was born in January, and I’ve often found myself not making it to the grocery store until we are desperately in need of milk, eggs, and bread.  So I sat down and brainstormed how I could streamline this process even more for our family…and this meal planning guide was born!

I decided to take it a step further and create a pretty printable version – ELEVEN pages full of helpful organization to make dinner planning less of a chore, ready and waiting to be assembled into your own helpful flexible meal planning guide!

Here’s a list of everything it includes:

– A detailed “how to use this planner” guide, written by yours truly
– Meal Planning Guide – 6 square weekly planning page
– “Dinner Repertoire” planning pages for keeping track of your recipes, organized by main ingredient
– Side Dish list
– Pantry Inventory organizing page
– Shopping List page, organized by grocery category
– Easy Meals Quick List
– Family Favorites List

And here’s the best news – this entire Printable Meal Planning Guide is FREE GIFT for all email newsletter subscribers!  So, if you’d like to subscribe to receive more inspiring ideas right in your inbox along with this great freebie, fill out the form below:

How do you deal with the daily “what’s for dinner?” question in your house?  Do you have any tried-and-true methods of organization?

Get your copy of my FREE meal planning binder!

Sign up to get a free copy of my meal planning system - an 11 page printable meal planning binder, complete with a pantry inventory, shopping list, and more to help get on top of your menu each week!

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