You may recall back in January that I declared meal planning as the “one thing” I am resolving to tackle as a home organizing goal this year. Since I asked my blog readers to hold me accountable, I’m checking in to let you know how things have progressed.

Since it’s “report card day” for both of my kids, I thought it would be fitting to offer up my own “report card”, based on the action steps I outlined in my January post:

 

 

Natalie’s Meal Planning Report Card

 

Action Step #1:  Create a “Master List” of meals that all (or most) of my family members will eat  Grade:  A

I did it!

My husband and I put our heads together to come up with the Meal Ideas master list. Honestly, I don’t know why it never occurred to us to do this before. Having this list to refer to has been super helpful in the meal planning process. It saves us from having to repeatedly brainstorm ideas for what to cook. Engage in ONE brainstorm session. Record results of brainstorm on paper. Refer to as needed.

The universe of meal possibilities is quite limited within the Gallagher household, since we have two extremely picky eaters who tend to like different things. For a meal to be included on the list, it needs to be one that at least 3 of the 4 family members will eat.

The challenge is always what to feed that 4th family member. Over the years, I have bounced back and forth between the “eat the meal I’m serving you or you’ll eat nothing” strategy, and the “eat leftovers or a PB&J” strategy. To this day, I remain conflicted about what to do with a kid that won’t eat the meal I’m serving. Ugh.

Action Step #2:  Identify a printable menu planner/grocery list to use as a tool for mapping out my weekly plan  Grade:  A

Since I go gaga over cute printables, this step was actually fun for me! I got to peruse Pinterest for something that appealed to me because I know that (like many of my clients) I’m more likely to actually use an organizing tool if it’s fun/cute/attractive. So thanks to the Happy Organized Life blog for offering up such a cute (and free!) meal planning/grocery list printable.

UPDATE: Since I published this post, I’ve actually created my own printable Meal Planning Kit. Feel free to download a copy for yourself!

Action Step #3:  Incorporate a meal planning component into our weekly family meeting that occurs on Sunday evenings  Grade:  C-

O.K., so this is where things began to fall apart for me.

In theory, Sundays seem to make the most sense for holding a weekly family meeting. In years’ past, it was the logical day of the week for us. However, between my husband’s new work travel schedule (which often requires him to leave early Sunday afternoon for his work destination) and our children’s competitive swim schedule (which often requires us to be at a swim meet for a large part of the day on Sundays), our family meetings became rather nonexistent irregular this winter.

We know the importance of a family meeting, but we are currently struggling with fitting these in around my husband’s crazy travel schedule and my kids’ crazy sports schedule (did I mention baseball starts up this month?).

The reality is that having the family collectively decide on the meals for the week is not going to happen and this task will fall solely on my shoulders.

Action Step #4:  Explore meal planning apps to determine if they might be useful  Grade:  B

Sigh. Oh how I wish this meal planning solution would work for my family. If it were just my husband and I, we would sign up for a service like Emeals in a heartbeat. We both eat just about anything and love a variety of foods.

But the reality is that this solution would just result in frustration for me since I know that my kids would not eat the vast majority of the menu items that are served up in these types of plans. I even explored the “Kid Friendly” meal plans across several services, and was deflated when I realized that even these menus would not work with my selective eaters (I’m so envious of families in which the kids actually eat anything you put in front of them!)

I gave myself a B, because after I evaluated a few online meal planning tools, I became convinced that these tools would not work for my family. Perhaps I gave up too early…the B is for my lack of tenacity!

 

Action Step #5:  To the extent possible, batch process weekly food preparation Grade:  N/A

Once again, our busy weekends prevented me from doing this. In my defense, the way our weekly meals play out, there really are not a lot of opportunities for batch processing the prep work.

This action step might become more salient if I was preparing large volumes of freezer meals, etc. I guess we’d all be more likely to snack on fresh veggies throughout the week if they were already batch cleaned and prepared.

Food for thought.

{ Overall Grade:  B- }

 

Have I moved closer to accomplishing my goal of consistently planning out and shopping for weekly meals ahead of time?  Yes. Am I where I want to be yet? No. There is certainly more room for improvement. For instance, there were a few days when I arrived home at 4 p.m. to this:

Oops! Although I had planned to have tacos, we didn’t have tacos because someone forgot to thaw the meat. So here’s a new action step to add to the list:

Action Step #6:  When completing my weekly meal plan, set calendar reminders for meal ingredients that need to be thawed each day.

As I tell my clients, it’s about progress, not perfection.

Do you struggle with this whole meal planning and food management thing too?

Be sure to check out these these helpful posts:

• Food Storage Organization: Tips, Ideas & Inspiration
• Printable Pantry Inventory & Freezer Inventory Trackers
• Creating Your Meal Planning Routine