Time Management: Meal Planning

I've been out of the professional world for almost a year. Even before I lost my job, time management was non-existent in my career after I returned from maternity leave (so basically, the last 5 months of my time there) because our department director, my immediate boss, left and they decided to run the Team Leads ragged instead of finding a replacement. I digress.

I'm currently reading Totally Organized. It's a bit dated (long distance phone calls??? haha!), but it has some good, if a bit militant, info. One thing I realized is that I am very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of person. If we are going to be successful at homeschooling (especially 2 kids at once) I am going to need a militant method of scheduling and organization.

One thing I have done that has already made my life so much simpler is meal planning. Yeah, I know, how very Suzy Homemaker... I never thought that would be something I'd need to or even could do. It seemed like taking something as simple as the evening meal and turning it into the writing of the Articles of Confederation. That's the wrong way to think of it. Now that we do not have a freezer full of easy to make ground beef, I really have to think about what we are going to have in advance, because I will likely need to thaw something or throw something in the crockpot in the morning.

This becomes problematic when the only meat we have are roasts. There are only so many ways to cook a roast (that aren't time consuming). With meal planning, I am able to see what's on the menu for the week and make sure we have the meat required as well as any buns or cheese we might need. Pretty much anything else can be substituted with what we have in stock here (rice, couscous, quinoa, frozen veggies, salad). Meals like tacos require further planning, as we can't keep the soft shells in stock at home.

So here's how I do it:

1. First, I made a list of meals, separated into main courses/full meals, sides, and veggies. 
• This isn't as hard as it seems. You'll find you probably make the same 10-20 things over and over. Or maybe you make different variations of the same thing (chicken - baked, fried, rotisserie from the store, etc).
2. Then I got a calendar. The one I link to is dry erase and basically contact paper. I put it on the fridge (which is just curved enough to make it a real SOB to put on straight and without bubbles).
3. Now, use your main list (have the family give it a once over to make sure you didn't miss anything) and fill in the calendar.
• Give consideration to things that occur regularly on certain days of the week. For instance, my son has banjo on Wednesdays, which means I need to have a quick and easy to eat dinner on the table by 5:30 so they can eat and leave at 6:00.
• Also give consideration to what you'll need buy to prepare meals for the week. I like to not put meatloaf, sloppy joes and tacos on the same week, because that means I'll have to buy about 10 lbs of ground beef in one week.
4. Now, every week when you go shopping, consult the menu, see what you already have in stock, and write down whatever you'll need to buy on your grocery list. You can use this exclusively for dinners, or you can plan every meal.
5. Don't ever plan for fast food (in our case, pizza from the local Italian joint or the hot bar at Whole Foods). Save that as an option for a day when things don't go as planned, emergencies come up, whatever. That way, you don't have to feel bad about spending extra money or eating less-than-healthy if the baby was cranky all day, the cat barfed all over,  Thing 2 overflowed the toilet, you had to run to the store because you realized you were completely out of diapers and you didn't have time to cook, but you already had pizza once this week because you had put it on the menu (a day you would have, ironically, had time to cook a 5 course meal but used the extra time to do something for yourself like knit, or, you know, take a shower).

I really can't recommend this enough, especially if you are new to being a stay-at-home mother. Trust me, your life will revolve around these 3 little words "what's for dinner???"