downloadable weekly meal planner template with snacks

#DOWNLOADABLE WEEKLY MEAL PLANNER TEMPLATE WITH SNACKS DOWNLOAD#

I am now organized enough to ensure this actually happens on time and it has become one of the sweetest parts of our day.

Dinner around the table together as a family: It’s so important to sit down to dinner together as a family.

I’ve learned that it makes no sense to scramble eggs every single morning when I can do it all at once and be done with it for the entire week. For example, we have been making a big batch of egg muffins on Sunday evenings that is enough to last us through the entire week.

Meal prepping: Never in my life have I been a “meal prepper,” but when I sit down and physically write out every meal I am encouraged to prep certain meals for the week.

Healthier meals: When I sit down and plan out our meals at home I choose healthy meals with clean ingredients, and I am able to stick to them! (As opposed to letting my eyes and stomach tempt me into sneaking all the junk into the buggy at the grocery store).

Now every meal is accounted for and we have just the right amount of food in the house to last us seven days. It would go bad before we could eat it and we would end up throwing it away. We used to end up with a bunch of food at the house but none of it made any sense or went together to form cohesive meals.

Less food waste: I can’t stand throwing food away.

Now I make my grocery list straight from my weekly meal plan and I always have every ingredient I need for each meal.

Never missing that one ingredient: See what I said above? The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I got halfway through making dinner one night only to realize we were out of eggs.

I make one master grocery list and make one big trip to the grocery store that lasts us all week. Now I sit down on Sunday and map out our meals for the week. (If you’ve ever been grocery shopping with two young children you understand what a nightmare this is!) Because I wasn’t organized I would always end up missing one or two ingredients I needed for a recipe.

Fewer trips to the grocery store: Previously I was making multiple trips to the grocery store throughout the week, sometimes multiple trips in one day.

The positive impacts we have noticed from such a small change have been tremendous: This simple process has made cooking more enjoyable, grocery shopping more enjoyable, and our evenings as a family more enjoyable. Then I make my grocery list directly from my meal plan and make one big trip to the grocery store for the entire week. It’s become my routine to sit down on Sunday afternoon and write out quick and easy meals for each day of the week.

Proverbs 31:15Įven though I still don’t love to cook, I have learned to find joy and satisfaction in preparing a healthy meal that we can enjoy around the table together as a family at the end of the day. But I also recognize that as a wife and mother I have a Godly responsibility to provide my family with healthy meals.Īnd portions for her female servants.

I am the first to admit that I really don’t enjoy cooking all that much (if I’m going to “make” something I’d much rather be crafting, sewing, or DIYing). I can’t even tell you what a game-changer this has been.

#DOWNLOADABLE WEEKLY MEAL PLANNER TEMPLATE WITH SNACKS DOWNLOAD#

You can download your free printable meal planner HERE and your grocery shopping list HERE. I knew something needed to change, so I sat down and created a printable weekly meal planner as well as a grocery shopping list. Not only did this make me feel less than adequate as a wife and mother, it led to the bad habit of asking Hubby to either swing through and pick up some quick unhealthy meal, or have him run to the grocery store for the “one thing” I needed to throw together a dinner at the last minute. Because of disorganization and lack of proper planning, I would constantly find myself looking up at the end of the day only to realize Hubby was on his way home from work and I had no plan for dinner. One of the areas in our life that Hubby and I set out to simplify is our diet (we started another Whole30 on January 2nd, but more on that later). My goal for 2019 is to slow down, simplify + organize, and get rid of the extra clutter so to speak both practically and metaphorically. I’m not normally one to make New Year’s resolutions or choose a “word of the year,” but going into 2019 one word kept coming to mind: s i m p l i f y. In the busyness of life and the (wonderful) chaos of raising two young children, I felt like I was drowning in the clutter and disorganization. There is something so refreshing about a blank slate and a brand new start going into the New Year.

Downloadable weekly meal planner template with snacks