Meal Planning 101: organizers

Over the last few weeks we've been talking about meal planning, and hopefully convincing anyone who feels like they just aren't organized enough to be a meal planner that is attainable and adaptable (and definitely worthwhile)! Today I want to revisit my favorite meal planning topic: organizers. I think there's something here for everyone, no matter what your lifestyle and intensity level of meal planning might be- which one would you use?

However you decide to go about meal planning, you're going to need some place to keep track of, well, your meal plan! Depending on how structured you want to get, there are a lot of ways to do so that will help keep you organized and make choosing meals each week easier.

1. Clipboard

OK, so it's not what we normally think of as a "clipboard" but it's a board with clips! The basic idea is to have your meal ideas written on cards, and you pick out the ones you want to use for each day and put them on that day's clip. Each clip has a day of the week on it, attached to a picture frame. The beauty of this system is that it's easy to use, cheap to make, and having the cards pre-made makes it easy to keep track of which meals you've made recently (by putting them into a separate box) and go through your list of meal ideas quickly to pick out new ones for the week. Click here to read my post on how I made and use this organizer.

2. Dry Erase

Dry erase boards are another easy way to keep track of your meals for the week. My favorite way to make dry erase organizers, of course, is with a picture frame. In the picture above I used scrapbook paper and letter stickers to make the template to go under the glass. You can set the board up however you want- keep your shopping list over on the side instead of to-do's/ prayer lists, write down breakfast/ lunch/ snack ideas in another section, etc this way. Click here to read more about how I make these. If you're not really the DIY type, you can also pick out one of the meal planner templates from my home organization binder, laminate it, and use it as a dry erase board as well!

3. Planner

Of course if you have a planner for home and/or school, you can also just write your meal plan down in your planner along with everything else! I've done this a few different ways: for a long time I reserved the box at the bottom of each day in my planner to write down my dinner menu. When my after-school schedule gets busy with meetings and extracurriculars, I've also just made a list in my notes section of all the meals for the week.

However you decide to go about it, I hope you'll give meal planning a shot! It has made my life so much easier not to have to stress about dinner during the week. What are your favorite meal planning tips? If you want to read my previous posts on the topic, click below:

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