In our neck of the woods, dinner time has always been this side of total chaos. Not in the sense that we are all going in 20 different directions (well, I guess that sometimes happens too!), but when dinner time came around every day it was an ordeal to get all three of us in agreement on what to have and to have all of the ingredients needed for said meal.
Our routine had always been: make a small list of meals that sounded good every few weeks to a month, head to the store and pick up a bunch of random items to fill the fridge and pantry, within a few days be frantically grabbing what was needed to make the meal decided on (about 2 hours earlier) as I rushed home from work to beat the school bus up the driveway. Almost everyday this would be the way it went...until about a month ago.
I had finally gotten so fed up with the madness surrounding the one meal a day we all get to eat together. It had gotten to the point that we were eating meals on rotation which equals - ONE BORED MOMMA!
Thanks to my love of Pinterest (or obsession as some may call it), I was able to find THE CUTEST recipe cards. Ok, I found a ton of cute recipe cards, but used my favorites! The recipe cards I use are from tipjunkie.com. I love the fact there are four different designs in the set - uniform but not!
After finding my recipe cards and printing a bunch of them, it was time to get them filled up with yummy new recipes to try! Luckily for me, my go-to stress reliever, a.k.a Pinterest, already had way too many recipes pinned that I had been wanting to try!
With my new recipe cards, I was set to make a weekly plan for dinners! It is so nice to automatically know what is for dinner and not having to frantically rush every evening. No more dreading meal time!
We used this system for a few weeks before I realized there was more to getting my meals organized than just using recipe cards. I needed something that would help me keep track of what we have on hand to know what we need on our newly set-up weekly trip to the store based on the meal plan.
I couldn't find an inventory list that worked for our house. We have our pantry upstairs that we keep our boxed items and the items we plan to use quickly. We also have a root cellar we use as a pantry for canned goods, jarred goods, cleaning supplies, etc. We needed a list that could cover both as well as to show me what was upstairs and what was downstairs. So I made mt own! By designing one, I was also able to make it similar to my recipe cards...added bonus!
Now I can sit down at the end of the week with my recipe cards and pantry inventory list and knock out the following week's meals in no time! After I have our meals narrowed down, I write them on our big white board calendar so that the boys will know what we are having as well. We use our white board to cover everything that's going on for the month so everyone can be on the same page! Very handy with our crazy lives.
And to finish up making our meal time planning as organized and stress free as possible, I used some plastic containers I had picked up at the Dollar Store and some Project Life cards I use in my planner and made some nifty little tubs for the boxes, cans, spices needed for each night's meal to be all in one quick place!
I am actually enjoying cooking again! We did have a busy week at one point and actually went a week without planning our dinners in advance...yeah that's not happening again! I felt so lost in the kitchen without a plan.
I plan on continuing to tweek our meal planning and will keep everyone updated as it becomes more of a routine for my family.
I hope that this helps you get your meal time a little less chaotic as well!
