How you can be the Meal Planning Hero of the family by having more time and funds to spend on more important adventures or activities with your loved ones.
Countless times I’ve forgotten a key ingredient from the store and couldn’t make the planned meal, or we ran out of school lunch items and I had to send my boys to school with random lunch snacks. Hello plain noodles and toast for dinner.
Our family heads out of the house on weekends for adventures. If we don’t have a plan or the right ingredients for taking lunch with us from our house, then we are forced to stop somewhere along the way and we either pay way too much or end up choosing something unhealthy. Or we take way too long leaving the house trying to raid the cupboards for adventure worthy snacks.
How Meal Planning Helped Our Family
As the menu planner and organizer of the family, I am responsible for creating plans and keeping the house stocked with food that will last us until the next shopping trip. It can be a lot of things to remember when we are already managing all of the different people and activities of the family. Once I started creating a general monthly meal plan for our adventures and schedules, I noticed that I was saving money and feeling less stressed about each upcoming meal or adventure.
Make a Plan – Be Prepared – Save Time and Stick to Budgets
These were some key benefits I found when I started basic meal planning:
Saved Time
- Allowing us to spend more time doing activities or being with our family
- Got the meal planning task done sooner, freeing us up for doing other chores
- Less trips to the grocery store
Saved Money
- Avoided buying take-out or drive-thru meals
- Less food waste from forgetting about groceries in your house
- Avoided stopping for gas station snacks on the way to our adventures
- Stayed within our monthly grocery budget
- Plan shopping days around monthly discount days or coupons
- Bought items when they were on sale
Nutritious Meals
- We had the right ingredients to create a healthy and balanced meal
- Have healthy snacks available to quickly grab
- Our bodies felt healthier and happier
- Avoided buying take-out
- Can control what’s in our food and how it’s made
Quicker Lunch Packing
- More time in the morning to get the kids ready for school
- Used our guide of favourite lunch items, helping us remember who likes what
- Get out of the house on time
- Start the day or adventure with a positive attitude
- Eliminate weird and random lunch snacks
