Make a Frugal Weekly Meal Plan That Will (Actually) Change Your Life

Inside: How to start the life-changing habit of creating a weekly meal plan. Of all the ways to simplify your life, this might be the best. We’ll discover how it saves you money and helps you manage one of the most time-consuming tasks of your day.

Planning and execution. For most things, but cooking especially, they are better when you separate them.

When 4:30 rolls around, and dinner is looming, the idea of thinking about it and making it gets wrapped up in one overwhelming task. A light sense of dread settles on you. You can’t think of a single thing you have made for dinner in your life, ever. And if you can, it doesn’t sound appealing. And if it does, you don’t have the ingredients.

But if you remove that planning from the process, everything is easier. Afternoon arrives. You check your notebook. Chicken and rice skillet. Chopped salad. You can get all that prepped in 30 minutes and clean up and make the salad while the chicken bakes. There’s ballet practice at 6, so you’re glad you planned something on the easier side. Getting up and turning on the oven suddenly doesn’t seem so hard.

Right? Right. Let’s start this frugal homemaking habit now. You’ll be so glad you did.

Step 1: Use What You Have

Okay. We don’t actually start with a plan. A plan is like a wish list. But when you’re trying to save money as a homemaker, one of the biggest rules is to use what you have. And so that’s why, every week, the first step is to see what you have.

This could mean leftovers that are ready to eat form last week Don’t set them up for failure by planning new recipes three days in a row. No. Your first meal on your plan must involve eating them. Do you have a few slices of deli meat and some rolls? You could turn that into half of a soup and sandwich night.

This could also mean ingredients that you have a ton of, lettuce that needs to be used up, or lots of tomatoes ready in the garden.

The point is, start with what you have. This simple step will save you more money than you’ll realize. Throwing away food is throwing away money, time, and effort. Don’t do it!

As a bonus, this can sometimes force you to get creative. What can you do with leftover bread? What would happen if you made a soup out of that celery and cream in the fridge? Find out.

Once you’ve taken stock of what you already have, it’s time to look outside your fridge: to what’s in season and on sale.

Step 2: Check Your Grocery Ad + Your Garden

You can spend your life forcing things or you can take them as they come.

And instead of insisting on strawberries in November and mashed potatoes in July, why not let the seasons dictate your life, just a little?

When produce is easily available and on sale, that means it’s at is peak. Enjoy it!

Besides, strawberry shortcake isn’t special when you have it any time you want.

Beyond actual seasonal produce, you’l find that there are “seasons” of sales at the grocery store. Even basics like ketchup and flour and coffee go on sale certain times of the year. You don’t need a complicated price book or bulk purchasing strategy here.

I just want you to look at your grocery store ad before you start your meal plan. Let it guide you a little.

Step 3: Plan for Leftovers

Remember our first step? This is different. I want each and every meal plan of yours to start with a leftover night. Your busiest night, when you know you really won’t want to make dinner. Leftovers. Write it down.

This means that there needs to be something leftover-friendly made 2 nights before that. I know you have some ideas. Write one down. Look at you. Almost halfway done.

Step 4: Fill It Out

Now you have to…you know…actually plan the rest of your meals. If this is where you get stuck, I have a small video workshop to help you build a rotating eternal meal plan. But at some point, you’ll need to write down the rest of your meal plan for the week.

If you are responsible for making breakfasts and lunches for family, I recommend you go ahead and do this now too. Remember when we talking about planning and execution? It’s better just to do all that planning at once while you’re in the right headspace. I find it helpful to start with dinners and then work backward to plan out lunches and breakfasts.

Make sure you’re looking at the weather and your schedule so that it all feels doable and appetizing when the actual day rolls around.

Step 5: Save Your Work

From now on, every Sunday, without fail, commit to having a week of meals planned. But! This doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch week after week.

I really, really, really, want you write down your plan down and save it. Just a folder or file. But don’t throw it out.

My favorite meal planning printables have space for your grocery list on the same page so you can work it all out in your head together. They are inseparable, after all, the food and the ingredients.

My preference is a pretty, styled printable so I can put it on the fridge. Everyone knows to check it, not ask me what’s for dinner.

If you don’t want a printable a simple spiral notebook is a great choice. I did this for years before I decided it was worth posting the week’s plan. This way everything stays together so you can refer back easily, but you lose the cute formatting and easy posting of a printable.

Answering Your Meal Planning Questions

Just Get Started

Remember, the goal here is to make your life easier. Not add more stress. If your plan falls apart one week, who cares? Just start fresh next Sunday.

Perfect meal planning doesn’t exist, but any plan beats no plan. And a simple plan you actually follow beats a complicated one you abandon.

So grab that notebook and start planning. Your 4:30pm future self will thank you.