Monthly Meal Plan /  June 28, 2023

Are monthly meal plans worth it? How do I create a monthly meal plan? What if I have picky eaters ... how do I plan for them?  These are the same questions I get asked a lot when people find out how I not only feed my family of 6 for around $1k/month but easily plan for a whole month in about 15 minutes. 

If these are questions that you are asking yourself then you're in the right spot! I was asking them too before I found this simple system for my family of 6.

Before you read this process I want to preface this post with this is what works for me, this is the cost of food in July 2023 in my area, Maryland, and this is a process that is evolving as my kids and family change. Everyone is going to be different and that is ok. Everyone is going to have different budgets and time allotments and that is ok. This is a fluid process but that is the beauty of it - it can change as you need it to!

When I tell you that I plan an entire month of dinners for my family of 6 in 15 minutes you’re probably thinking it’s full of quick frozen meals that take forever to prep and that you never use because you don’t remember to defrost them. 

NOPE.

These are all meals that I make in real-time, have minimal ingredients, and are super easy because I hate to cook. 

I have tried everything when it comes to meal prepping & planning … and failed miserably. I was really good at prepping frozen meals and organizing everything but what I failed at was actually using the meals. As a mom of 4 with ADHD, it is really hard for me to remember the small details of taking a frozen dinner out the night before or the morning of. Don’t tell me it becomes routine - if you know anyone with ADHD you know that routine is not something we actually have but that’s a different story for another day.

That is why I started meal planning this way. It’s simple. It’s digital. It’s easy to change things up if I need to. It’s versatile to the needs and wants of a busy family.

Here are all the details!

This kind of seems like an obvious first step but this step was a game changer for me and made the entire process easier in the end. Doing this step I had an endless list of meals to pull from when I was tired of eating the same things over and over again. 

For example - 1 of my little kids is a picky eater (ASD & SPD). He doesn’t like anything touching, spicy, with sauce on it, or too much texture. He loves hamburgers on a stick (a toothpick with meatballs, a cheese cube, and a pickle). But he doesn’t like them all together on a stick - he has to put them on the stick. I will put this meal on the calendar when I know he is not going to be exhausted and overstimulated from his day so that way he won’t have a meltdown before seeing I kept his deconstructed. My 2-year-old is a little too young to be trusted with the toothpicks so I also put this meal on the menu when I know that my hubby will be home for dinner so we can both keep an eye on the little kids. 

I look at our Google Calendar and see where everyone is going to be and what we have going on before I start meal planning. Once I have the lay of the land schedule-wise I start going through all of the recipes that I brain-dumped in step one keeping in my the criteria of loves, likes, tolerates, and will pick apart and eat. Those 4 criteria will then be applied to the days of the week as needed. 

For example - most weeknights in the summer we are eating dinner at the pool. I know that my kids are going to be distracted and want to graze food for the most part so I avoid dinners that either are not good cold or not good for grazing. I would probably save crockpot chili for a day when rain is in the forecast and bring either steak bites with dipping sauce or hamburgers on a stick instead. 

I then base my weekly grocery purchases off of the recipes I added to the upcoming week. 

I don’t buy ahead, I don’t really buy in bulk (although it might look like it because of the size of our family) I just buy what we need for the week to help reduce waste and keep us on budget.

Doing this also allows me to take advantage of items that are on sale. If I see that chicken is on sale I might swap out a non-chicken meal for a chicken meal to take advantage of the savings. 

This is a step that is kind of misleading. I don't really do this because I found that it was too stressful and didn't really fit into my schedule. 

I cook what I need nightly and don’t stress about the rest! 

Our schedule is very fluid - things change all the time just like it probably does with your family. If I find that not everyone is as hungry as anticipated and I have a heavy meal planned for that night I’ll swap that meal out for another meal and plan snacks and lunch a little better the next day to accommodate the swapped meal. 

I use leftovers for lunch the next day for myself/hubby or my oldest will use it as midnight dinner. I know leftovers are pretty hard to come by with a large family but there are times when I will purposely make more than we need for one meal. 

If you have teens/young adults in your house (specifically boys) you know what I mean by this statement. My oldest will make full-on meals at midnight - 2 AM because he’ll wake up out of a deep sleep hungry. If there are leftovers then I’ll use them for lunches to help keep down on our lunch expenses for the family budget. I’m not afraid of leftovers but my hubby would rather not eat lunch than eat leftovers. At least we complement each other LOL! 

I then adjust the following week’s meal plan based on what recipes we were not able to eat, what ingredients I have leftover so nothing goes to waste, and what we will have time for based on our family schedule. I then move things around, plan out the following week’s meals, create the grocery order, and then rinse and repeat! 

 I assign different cooking nights to my hubby and my oldest. This way the task of cooking dinner is not always on me. 99% of the time it’s on me because we’re going to be eating at the pool and neither of them can help me with that due to their work schedules but when they’re home you bet your booty they’re in the kitchen cooking up some deliciousness for the family! 

If you need to see this in action to fully understand the steps and the flow of everything I’ve got you! 

You can watch my complete process in action on my YouTube channel. I’m going through and planning out July’s meal plan for the month and then our meal plan for the first week in July. I’ll then compose my weekly grocery list and be able to schedule that pickup order with the ability to add to/edit up until Saturday.

I know this process is not for everyone but when I tell you that this has saved us so much money, time, and the dreaded question of “what do you want to do for dinner?” 

Believe it. 

If you have any questions drop them in the comments of the video and I’ll answer you!