11 Tips for How to Meal Plan as a Busy Mom | Meal Planning Printable - Simple Bliven

Learning how to meal plan as a busy mom can be time consuming and a bit stressful, but it doesn’t have to be!

I know that the weeks I slip on my meal planning are also the weeks that I’m the most exhausted and fumbling through my days. We have only so much mental capacity each day and meal planning can be a heavy burden if we don’t get a little organized. Once I started implementing these tips I found my weekly planning took less time and energy! So if you are finding yourself exhausted and stressed trying to feed your family these tips for how to meal plan as a busy mom are for you!

As always take what resonates and leave the rest. Some of these tips go really well together and honestly doing them all will be a game changer if you’re willing to go through the process of creating good habits. A few of these require a bit of up front work but once its done things will run like a well oiled machine. Alright without further ado, lets get into this meal planning routine and system.

How to Meal Plan as a Busy Mom

1. Reflect on your Family Needs

The first thing you’ll want to do is consider what your family needs are. Are you in a season of life with small children where prepping snacks might be a priority? Are parents both working full time so therefore prepping lunches might be really important? Do you have regular appointment’s or events that happen every week? How much can you make from scratch vs buying premade? These are the kinds of questions to ask yourself so that you can set realistic expectations of how often you can cook and what kind of meals you have the time to make.

2. Collect and Organize Recipes Your Family Already Love

Raise your hand if you are a chronic recipe pinner on Pinterest but never get to actually making them. *Raises hand slowly* I struggle with this one which is why sometimes it’s best to go analog. I’d say my approach is hybrid.

Start with asking your family what meals you’ve already made that they love and take note. Then look to my Pinterest recipe boards. The tried and true recipes should be printed out or written down somewhere for easy reference. I have a cute old school recipe box that gets the recipes that I know are winners. I only have so many recipe cards so I get very picky in choosing which ones will get a card. Choose whatever method you will actually reference. If a recipe binder sounds fun to make but you never open it once its made, it won’t help your weekly meal planning at all. If you want to try new recipes print them out to avoid doom scrolling Pinterest for recipe ideas. Also I suggest keeping your favorite recipe books in plain view to check first before going to Pinterest to, again, avoid the scrolling trap.

3. Keep a List of Your Staple Meals

Now that you’ve collected your recipes in one place it will make it easier to keep a running list of meal ideas. In the back of my planner, I have staple meals that I use to help jog my memory, if you will, when I’m feeling stuck. This one isn’t 100% necessary because you could just as easily flip through your recipe collection but a simple running list is like a birds eye view of what you could make. I have a list of dinners and I organize them within themed categories which brings me to my next tip.

4. Create Themed Dinner Nights

This for me was the most fun part of creating a meal planning system that works. Creating themed dinner nights is another way to combat decision fatigue. There are so many ways that you could do this but I chose themes that were practical as well as family favorites.

M – Leftovers
T- Taco Tuesday
W- Breakfast for Dinner (aka Waffle Wednesday)
T- Inspired Night
F- Pizza/ Pasta Friday
S- Dine out/ Leftovers
S- Crock Pot Sunday

This has worked for our family because I make a big crockpot/ instapot meal on Sundays which means I have plenty of leftovers for Monday which i a heavy meal prepping day for me. Not having to worry about dinner takes that stress off. I also teach a beginner pottery class Wednesday nights so breakfast for dinner (aka super easy and my husband’s favorite) makes that night a breeze. Thursday night is literally whatever we are in the mood for. Sometimes its BBQ or asian or greek bowls or more traditional dishes. It’s also the day where I could dedicate a little extra time to try something new or more involved.

These themes will be very personal to your needs. You can try themed nights based on culture (Mexican, asian, greek, Italian) , cooking method (sheet pan, instapot, one pot) or category of food (soups, salad, breakfast).

5. Check schedules and plan accordingly

Since we will be meal planning at the beginning of a new week, it is a great habit to have to check your family’s schedule in order to plan your meals to reflect the business or maybe lack of business of that particular week. If you know you’re out for soccer practice twice a week in the evenings, then maybe you decide that those are crock pot meal nights or one of those nights is an eating out night. Maybe you already know that you are having dinner at a parent or friend’s house. Mark that on your meal planner as one meal you don’t need to plan for.

6. Meal Prep in Advance

If you have time at the beginning of your week to prep just one thing that will make a difference to your family, do it. Again maybe its batch prepping a meal to put into lunch containers, or pre chopping veggies and other snack foods for easy grabbing for little kids or even making a freezer meal for a rainy day. Choose the #1 priority meal to prep and if you have time to do more then even better.

7. Chunk Your Meal Planning and Prepping

Remember we are learning how to meal plan as a busy mom, if you’re hear you likely don’t have a whole Sunday to dedicate to meal planning. Doing all the parts of meal planning, that is, planning meals, making the corresponding grocery list, actually doing the grocery shopping etc, can be time consuming so chunk your steps. Maybe you take a few moments over the course of the weekend to do a little bit at a time so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Loosely what I do is:

Scan freezer/fridge and pantry to see what can be or needs to be used up.
Take note of those ingredients and come up with loose meal ideas for the week.
Sit down and solidify meal ideas for the week and write down corresponding grocery list
Place grocery list order or share list with husband for pick up
Prep snacks, bread and/or meals on Meal Prep day

I almost always do 1 & 2 on Saturday, 3 & 4 in Sunday and 5 on Monday. I’ve gotten faster and will often do steps 1-4 all in one go but I always leave step 5 for another day so I can focus in the kitchen.

8. Grocery Shop Online to Save Time

It took me forever to jump into doing online grocery shopping because I just didn’t like the idea of someone else picking out my fresh produce but I always check those at pick up and more often then not they do a good job. This is a massive time saver and makes this process so painless. Try it trust me.

9. Delegate When Possible

My husband and I have a shared Note file on our phones called Grocery Shopping. It’s where I will write out the meal plan for the week, the scratch foods I will be making and the things I need. He will often do the pick up or shopping Monday during his lunch break. If it’s possible for your situation, I can’t tell you how much of a load it is off my shoulders to have that kind of help.

10. Make a Master Grocery List

If you’ve been cooking for your family for sometime then you know there are certain ingredients you always want to have on hand. Look to your themed dinner ideas, the staple meals your family eats on a regular basis and recipes you constantly use to formulate your master grocery list. Keeping the list on paper instead of in your brain will help make sure you don’t forget things and make your weekly prep time much more efficient. I divided my mastery list into four simple categories; fruit & vegetables, meat & dairy, freezer and pantry staples. This printable is the one I created to keep myself organized and I reference it especially when going to bulk stores like Costco. I hope you can find it useful too!

11. Keep Inventory of Your Pantry & Freezer

This final tip goes hand in hand with the tip before. Keeping note of how many items you have on your master grocery list will ensure that you never run out of the things you’re always reaching for. It also helps you keep note of the things that you may not currently be reaching for but you know you will. For example, keeping canned tomato sauce and paste is something I know I use but its definitely more heavily used during the autumn and winter months when we are having chilis, soups and saucier foods.

I keep a specific freezer inventory because we ordered a half cow for the first time this year and knowing how much of each cut I have is essential to quick and easy meal planning. This doesn’t have to be fancy, literally a small white board or a piece of paper on the side of the freezer/ fridge is all you need. Of course if you want something a little nicer, I made you a printable for that too. 😬

Meal Planning Printable

Below you’ll find the links to access all the printables I’ve mentioned today. I hope you find them useful and feel inspired to take charge of your meal planning. Like I said learning how to meal plan as a busy mom doesn’t have to overwhelming and taking a couple hours to do some upfront work will save you the so much stress. Let me know how it goes!