How To Meal Plan For Busy Families Because Dinner Is Important
Here you will learn how to meal plan in four easy steps that anyone can do. By planning your meals for the week, you won’t be temped to stop for fast food on a busy week night. You will have a healthy meal plan that works for you and your family.
Whether you’re meal planning for a busy family of 6 or a family of one, these ideas can benefit everyone.
Meal planning when you have a busy family can seem overwhelming. Do you struggle with meal planning? With these tips, you can become a pro at meal planning.
Meal Planning Explained
Meal planning shouldn’t be hard. Right? Then why do so many of us fail to plan out our meals in advance?
To create a meal plan, you need to set aside a day and time to plan your meals for the following week. Or some would like to plan for an entire month. Write every meal down on a calendar for reference through the week.
I believe we view meal planning in the wrong way. Too often meal plans are thought of as taking a huge amount of time when in reality they save precious minutes every day.
That is if you actually make the effort.

Plan For Healthy Meals
My biggest fail is not planning my family’s dinners for the week. Too often, I am looking at the clock and realizing it’s dinner time. And I have no idea what I am going to make.
So, I usually end up throwing something together which is less than tasty. Or grabbing some fast food because I am too tired to even think about using a recipe, let alone cooking it.
The thing is I always have good intentions of making a meal plan but for one reason or another it never happens.
Does this sound like you?
That is all about to change. With these tips, you can meal plan.
Why You Need To Meal Plan For The Week
Meal planning for busy families is especially important. There are many benefits that will far outweigh the time spent meal planning.
You should meal plan because you need to:
- Provide a balanced meal. You want to provide a healthy meal every night.
- Save money. By having a meal plan, you avoid the pitfall of fast food which eats (pun intended) into the family budget.
- Save time. With planning ahead, you will have all the ingredients you need for every meal. No more last minute runs to the grocery store.
- Enjoy your family time. Assign each family member a dinner duty. More help in the kitchen is always welcome. This a good teaching tool.
- Try new recipes. Choose a new recipe for one dinner each week. This will keep your meal plans fresh.
- Be less stressed after a long day. No more worrying about what you are going to feed your family.
- Prepare ahead of time. Prepping ingredients in advance saves time. A convenience that will inspire cooking dinner.
- More food variety. When planning ahead, you can be sure that you won’t be serving the same vegetable with every meal.
Using the following meal planning ideas will turn you into a meal planning ninja!
Meal planning takes a minimal amount of effort but you have to start. That is what I think stumps most of us. Just to begin. But where to begin? And how?

How To Plan Meals For The Week
- Choose a dedicated day that you will meal plan for the next week.
First off, set a dedicated day to write down your meal plan. Do not be like me and create a meal plan after you shop for groceries. That is totally backwards.
Choose a day that is the day before you go grocery shopping. We shop on Sunday. So, meal planning is best for me to do every Saturday.
Stick with this dedicated meal planning day every week. It will be easier for you to remember if you mentally block out the time to do this task.
- Take inventory of your pantry, fridge and freezer.
In order to choose what recipes you will prepare for the week, you need to know what you have on hand.
Take stock of, for example, canned goods, spices, condiments and the like in your pantry. Make note of what you are running low on or are completely out of. Do the same in your fridge and freezer.
This also gives you a heads up on any ingredients that you need to use up. Or perhaps have lots of.
If you have an abundance of frozen chicken for instance, make sure that you include a couple of meals that include chicken.
It makes sense and cents to use up what you already have before buying fresh ingredients.
- Check out the sales for your local grocery store.
By using sale items this will save money and stress when planning your meals. Make a list of the sale items that you intend to use in your meal plan. Pay attention to the proteins that are on sale. They tend to be the most expensive.
- Choose your dinner recipes for the week.
Now that you are armed with your pantry inventory and your grocery sales list, you can begin to pick out recipes that will make the most of your food budget.
I am only focusing on dinner recipes since breakfast and lunch are fairly simple meals. Dinner on the other hand tends to be a bit more complex.
Check your calendar for the week you are meal planning for. Are there any activities that require a quick dinner? Take those days into consideration when meal planning.
Theme dinner ideas are fun and easy to plan for.
I love the idea of choosing a certain day of the week that is pretty much the same dinner each week.
Taco Tuesday, anyone? For us, it’s Pizza Friday. By the time Friday gets here, I am ready for a break. Sometimes, it’s homemade pizza or pizza takeout.
By dedicating each day of the week as a category such as Meatless Mondays, you will be able to quickly get that meal plan completed.
Write Down Your Meal Plan
I have a meal planning printable that you can print out and post in your kitchen. I like to hang it inside a cabinet door. This way, everyone can take a look at that meal plan rather than asking what’s for dinner. Although, I am sure they’ll still ask.
I also like to keep my meal plan in my Happy Planner. If you own a Cricut cutting machine, I have some menu plan stickers for you to make that take meal planning to the next level.
Go grocery shopping and then it’s time to meal prep.
Meal Prep To Save Time
Meal prep is a way to simplify the cooking process. It can be as much or as little as you have time for.
Whether you cook the main dishes and freeze them or simply gather ingredients together in a bin, this will save you time.
My personal preference is to gather all my ingredients for a meal in bins the night before. One bin for room temp ingredients such as canned food, spices etc. Then a second bin for the refrigerator items such as any fresh vegetables, dairy products, etc. By containing the dinner ingredients the night before, all you have to do the next day is grab two bins and start cooking.
Create A Meal Rotation Calendar
A meal rotation calendar is when you pull your family’s favorite dinners into a weekly calendar.
To begin, make a list of all your family’s favorite meals. If stumped for ideas, ask them.
A few meal planning ideas are listed below:

Try to come up with at least 28 ideas. This way you are creating a bank of dinner plans.
Then you can simply pull those dinner ideas into the weekly meal plan. Just make sure the dinner ideas you use coincide with your grocery store’s weekly sale.
Making this meal rotation calendar has been a game changer for me. I find it much simpler to make my grocery list now that I have a definite list of meals for the week. Having a grocery list, makes the dreaded chore of going grocery shopping a lot better now.
Having Dinners Scheduled Is Empowering
I hope that by using just a few simple tips, this will make a big difference in how you view meal planning. To be honest, this can be empowering. I believe this is a system you can continue to do every week.
Thank you for this post! I’m working on getting back into meal planning and prepping , especially now with the prices of everything going up. I love the idea of using bins to prep your ingredients! Great tips and tricks 😊
I’m so glad you found some useful tips! I agree that meal planning is more important than ever. Especially since food waste is also money waste.
Thank you for your tips. I’ve been a widower for the last 10 years just sort of plugging along. Eating at home going out or grabbing fast food more often than I should have. The last year or so I have gotten into the habit of planning my meals for the week. I’ve themed some of my weeks Meatless Monday/Breakfast, Tuesday-Taco night, Wednesday Soup and Salad, Fish Friday at this point Thursday, Ssaturday and Sunday are just sort of hit and miss or whatever I come up with. Some of my Saturday’s and Sunday’s have been designated as Tailgate day game day type snacks something in the crockpot that I can grab, coney dogs, meatball hoagies etc. From another planning guide I’ve gone to using a Google calender where I put my theme days in a different color as compared to the main calendar. I’m also considering using the repeat option where I can put some of my meals on a ratation such as on Taco Tuesday Beef Enchiladas one night going on a 6-8 week rotation. Even as a single person I have found mealing to be very helpful