So the past two weeks my husband and I have ventured into meal planning, and so far I am LOVING it! I was a little overwhelmed and apprehensive about starting this adventure, but it is a lot easier than you would think. You have to start by taking an inventory of what you have for food in your home. It is easiest to build your meal plan when you know what you have to use. There are a TON of apps out there that can help you with this whole process and build the plans for you, but we decided to keep it simple. I started a google document and shared it with my husband. This way he was able to make edits or changes to the menu that he wanted. We also placed a grocery list on the bottom of each meal plan week. This was helpful when creating meals for the week and our grocery shopping trips. Now, not only did this help us use food that we already had (which saves us money$$), but it also allowed for us to try some new recipes. Now as most of you know, I'm a huge sucker for Pinterest, so as you can imagine, I have a very large board of recipes I want to try some day. Usually on Friday or Saturday I try a more complicated or new recipe. This allows for me to further my cooking skills as well as trying new things (and finally use those pins)! I also enjoy using Google docs because it allows me to access from my phone, computer, iPad, etc. That way if I'm at the store and can't remember what was on the list for the week, I can just pull it up or edit it anywhere. I can also reuse the plans that I've already created if I don't feel like I want to create a new plan, which save on time as well. One of the last things that I've enjoyed about meal planning is it can allow for some freezer cooking. This is something that I've been interested in as well, and meal planning is allowing me to slowly dip my toes into freezer cooking as well! The only con that I can see so far about meal planning (mind you it's only been a few weeks) is that it takes a little bit of time to put together. Again, going through what you have at home is something you need to keep up on and planning the meals is also a little time consuming. Since this is something that I've been enjoying, I don't mind it, but thought I would put it out there! I would highly recommend meal planning for any size household for so many reasons. Meal planning has forced me to commit to cooking homemade meals and eliminates a lot of eating out, which in turns saves money. If this is something that you've been debating on starting I would recommend giving it a whirl!
