Tired of trying to come up with dinner ideas? Find out the easiest way to make the BEST meal plan for a busy working mom like yourself!
You come home from a hectic day at work, you meant to stop at the grocery store but were running late to pick the kids up and now it’s 5 o’clock. The kids are “starving,” you’re tired, and there’s only a half box of cheerios in the cupboard. If you find yourself in this situation, DoorDashing food more often than you want, I can help!
The best way to meal plan for a busy working mom like yourself is to have any plan at all. Even just writing down 5 weeknight meals you think you could cook that week and then buying the ingredients for those meals will get you further ahead than you are now. That’s the simple fix. You can come up with a quick meal plan in about 10 minutes and have the food ready for grocery pickup in another 10 but it will only last you for those 5 days.
The Meal Plan:
If you want to feel organized, get ahead of the dinnertime dread, and save money then you’re going to need to invest about 1-2 hours into making a meal plan guide. Once you have a guide, you can save time every week coming up with meal ideas. Your kids can even help if they are old enough to brainstorm ideas!
1. Make a List of every meal your family enjoys.
Complex or simple, everything counts! The goal is to make a master list of all the meals you like so you have ideas for when you draw a blank. Look through recipe books or your Pinterest recipe board to remind yourself of some of the recipes you cook less often.
2. Categorize your list
Break down your list into 3 categories: Simple (under 30 min to make start to finish), Crockpot (take a long time to cook but very little work), and Advanced (anything that takes longer than 30 min to make.
3. Find Similarities
Look for meals that use similar ingredients that you could use in different ways to cut down on grocery cost and food waste. For example, my family enjoys both carbonara and egg bakes. I usually use only a half package of bacon for each recipe so I could make both recipes in the same week and not have to worry about accidentally finding a half package of uncooked bacon in the back of the fridge a month from now. If that sounded like the voice of experience…it was. Other meals that take a half package of bacon could be pancakes with bacon and eggs, bacon cheeseburgers, or loaded baked potatoes!
4. Look for Shortcuts
Are there ways you can cut down cook time of Advanced meals? Could you make it the night before and just bake it when you get home from work? Do you have time the weekend before to make and freeze it? Could you pre-cut ingredients?
5. Check the Schedule
Look ahead at your week to determine your families needs. Do the kids have sports practice this week and you won’t have time to cook? Would a crockpot meal work best that day?
6. Pick a week of meal ideas
Make sure if you’re getting any fresh veggies, fruit, or herbs that you make these at the start of the week so they don’t go bad before you need them. Don’t worry about being too rigid, especially your first week. If you want to swap Tuesday’s meal for Thursday, do it!
7. Order your Groceries
If you’re not planning on using coupons, doing a grocery pickup order can save you both time and money. No wandering the aisles trying to find things and fight crowds, and no impulse buys! I like to use Walmart for the majority of my groceries, however, be aware of the $35 order minimum for pickup. Learn more about the Walmart pickups here.
Want to get more advanced?
Once you have a list of your favorite meals, you can make a meal plan for however long you want! That’s why this process is the best way to meal plan for a busy working mom like yourself. I’ve personally tried a month long menu and I’ve also tried a 5 week rotating menu. Both of these worked well to help me get organized and to have ideas and ingredients ready for supper each night, but I did find that I spent more money in the long run because I didn’t account how many times we would repeat a meal (like pizza) in a month. I also found that the further out I planned a menu, the more edits I would make to it as our schedule changed in ways I hadn’t predicted at the beginning of the month.
Do you have a list of meals your family enjoys? Have you ever made a meal plan for longer than 1 week at a time? Let me know how it went in the comments below!