Family Meal Planning

Planning family meals can be one of the most stressful times in any parent’s day.  Use these tips and ideas to help make the planning easier, so that your family can have healthy family meals without the stress.   

  • Set aside time every week to plan your family meals and make a grocery list.  Add the time you need for meal planning to your daily routines and planner so that it becomes a regular habit and a priority.  Products to help with this: Monthly Meal Planner, Family Meal Cookbook & Weekly Meal Planner, What to Eat Notepad, Menu Planning Pad, momAgenda Meal Planner, Got Dinner? Quick & Easy Recipes, Confident Mom Weekly Household Planner, Meal Planning Calendar
  • Begin by planning family dinners rather than trying to plan every meal so that you don’t become overwhelmed.  Once you have a good system down for planning family dinners, you can work on planning breakfast, lunch, and snacks. 
  • Save your meal plans so that you can easily rotate them and don’t have to spend a lot of time recreating them.  The Monthly Family Meal Planner is a great tool to help you.
  • Avoid complaints and fussiness from the kids by including them in the family meal discussion.  By giving them a voice in what meals on are on the menu, they are more likely to eat what is prepared.
  • If you have picky eaters, let them help you prepare the meals.  Kids are much more likely to eat their dinner if they can see what goes into making the meal.
  • Don’t plan meals that require a lot of prep work for busy days.  Save meals with a lot of prep for either weekends or days in which you don’t have a lot of events.
  • If time is tight during the evenings, try doing some prep work either in the mornings or on the weekends.  Some things that can be done in advanced include cleaning and washing vegetables, marinating meats, and mixing sauces.
  • Make clean up easier by teaching kids to rinse and load their own dishes in the dishwasher.
  • Give chores to your kids to help with meal preparation.  Good chores for kids include setting the table, clearing the table, filling beverage glasses, loading or unloading the dishwasher, cleaning vegetables, or setting out condiments.  Products that can help with this: Chore Charts for Kids
  • Make sure you have everything you need for the family meals in your cupboards by using a grocery list.  Products to help with this: What to Eat Notepad, Menu Planning Pad, All Out of Notepad, Shopping.pad, Grocery Magnetic Memo Pad
  • Keep your grocery lists easily accessible so that items can be easily added.
  • Teach your family to add items to the grocery list.
  • Schedule grocery shopping days on your calendar or in your planner.  Products to help with this: Family Calendars, Mom Planners