You come back from work, all exhausted and tired, your work day is over but IS IT THOUGH? nhaaa, now you need to think about lunch for the kids for tomorrow, what to make for dinner, give the kids a bath, organize their cloths for the next day and make sure they do not have homework. Only then, your work day is over and you have the ENTIRE night to yourself 🙂 Luckily I have my hubby and we share the chores but I tell ya; this is not easy.

So how can we make it just a tad easier? Be organized.

I discovered that if I have everything written down, everything planned; I save time, save money, save the frustration and earn a smile and all with a simple chart. The “Meal Planner”.

The meal planner is basically a chart, a table, where you write down your plans about meals for the week. Breakfast, Lunch (whether at home or school for the kids) and dinner.

What you do is sit down about 1-2 days before you go grocery shopping that week and plan ahead. You think about what you would like to make and eat every day and every meal of the day. At first you’ll find t a bit confusing because you’re not used to this, but you’ll see it gets better with time.

After you wrote down the meals you plan on having, think about the ingredients you’ll need for each meal and write them down. Now, incorporate all the ingredients into 1 list. This is now your shopping list. Some of the ingredients you’ll have at home but some you’ll need t buy when you go out grocery shopping.

Print out the “Meal Planner” and hang it on your fridge.

You’ll see that this will give you some peace of mind because you will no longer have to think what to make and in addition it will help you save money because you will no longer buy unnecessary ingredients “just in case…”.

Below is an example for a “Meal Planner” and here is a link to the basic template. You can adjust it of course based on your needs.