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I like things easy and simple at home which is why I also try to have a plan for dinner… even if it is a loose one! 🙂 For a long time I struggled with planning a menu. I have tried numerous ways to get a menu set and it took a while to find my groove. Now that I have know what works for me I thought I’d share how to plan an monthly menu with you guys today.
After months of writing my menu on a sheet of notebook paper, I finally sat down to create a simple (and by simple I do mean simple! no need to waste excess ink here!) monthly menu printable. Because I like to keep things easy and reduce excess waste, I print my menus on both sides of the paper.
Why plan dinner?
Having a plan for dinner not only saves me money but time too. No longer do I wonder what we will have for dinner. No more proclamations of “I don’t care, you pick!” Nor do I have to answer the dreaded what’s for dinner question. 🙂 Okay, actually, I still get asked that question every day, but now I can respond with “what does the menu say?”
How does planning dinner save money?
Knowing what we are having for dinner stops us from resorting to picking up takeout every night or having frozen pizzas for dinner. Not that I have anything against frozen pizza! We have it occasionally, and if James had his way we’d have it even more often.
How does monthly meal planning save time?
I used to struggle with planning a menu for each day and with trying to remember what we liked or what we didn’t. It can be quite exhausting trying to plan a menu for 6 people, two of whom are toddlers who like something one day and refuse to eat it ever again the next.
At the beginning of the month, I sit down with my Monthly Menu and schedule in leftovers, dinners out, birthdays, anniversaries and any other time I will not be cooking. 🙂 Then I only have to plan dinners for the remaining days.
How to plan a monthly menu?
- Note any birthdays or anniversaries, then find out what the celebrants want for dinner and fill it in.
- In our family, for celebrations we are allowed to pick between homemade dinner or going out for dinner on birthdays and anniversaries.
- Schedule in holiday dinners if any – holiday dinners usually take more prep time and leave lots of leftovers. Try to plan a meat dish that can be used to make something else the next night. Like an Easter ham that gets reused in Cheesy Ham and Hashbrown Casserole or White Cheddar Ham and Spinach Quiche. Or a Thanksgiving turkey that gets made into sandwiches the next night.
- Schedule in leftovers next – we eat leftovers every four days, so the leftovers do not sit in the fridge too long nor do they go forgotten in the back of the fridge to become science experiments.
- Write in any dinners out or vacation days where you will not be home.
- In our house, I don’t cook on both weekend days, meaning if I cooks Saturday night then momma gets Sunday night off! We eat leftovers if they are scheduled, eat out, or someone else cooks. We also have takeout, go out to eat, or James gets his wish for frozen pizza at least once a week.
- Schedule crock pot days. On days when I know I will be out of the house later than 5 pm, I make it a crock pot night. The girls and I usually have one long outing a week, so those nights are crock pot nights.
- Ask for any requests. I always ask for input from the rest of the family for dinner ideas. James loves burgers and pizza so I try to add it to the menu at least once a month, even if it has to be a dinner out or take out night. He is a very odd guy because he prefers the frozen pizzas. Mmm, cardboard-y goodness! But at least he admits that he is in fact a “Pizza Monster. Om, nom, nom!”
- Fill in the remaining days. I plan for the meat first. We eat chicken twice a week, guaranteed. Beef, pork, and occasionally lamb fill in the remaining days. I like to space the meat out so we don’t eat chicken two days in a row. Then I plan one family favorite a week, like Sausage and Rice Casserole. For the remaining days, I use Gathered Table to suggest recipes to me.
I like using a meal planning service like Gathered Table (not an affiliate link, I just really like them) because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for me. I have a general idea what we will be having because I planned for the meat and each week Gathered Table emails me the menu plan and I change it around if needed.
I created a simple monthly menu planner in both landscape and portrait printing options. You can find each one here:
Monthly menu planner landscape
I hope you find the menu planners helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Do you plan a monthly menu?
Have a blessed day!
Brandi
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Having a plan saves me time when it comes to grocery shopping. There’s no wandering the aisles and no running to the store three or four times a week. It’s awesome!
A plan really does save time and money when grocery shopping. Thanks for visiting, Jennifer.
Planning meals saves us money because I buy far less “filler junk”. We’re usually pretty good at sticking to what I plan, but some weeks are definitely better than others. Like tonight, we’re supposed to have chicken, but tired and really just want to grab takeout.
I totally get it, Jamie. I have those days too. Which is why I find planning for leftovers and other people cooking allows me to take some time off.
This is fantastic! I really need to do more meal planning. It will allow me to include a wider variety of meals too as we tend to stick to the same stuff at the moment. Brilliant printable. Thanks!
Tori, I hope you find menu planning helpful and beneficial for your family.
This is fantastic! I have planned out meals for the week before, but never for the whole month. I may have to use your printable and give it a try!
I hope you love it, Echo! It really is not as hard as it seems at first.
Planning food for the entire week is one of the challenging things my mom is responsible of in the household. I can imagine printing a menu for myself since I am getting married soon and will be staying in a new home. This saves time and money indeed. Else, we would be hunting out for food in restaurants each time!
Roch, I totally understand. Planning a menu is something I learned after I got married.
So hapoy i found this. We are starting out healthy living get plan again and I was looking g for menu planning. What a great resource. It will make everything from grocery shopping to cooking so much simpler.
Monica, I’m so glad it will be of help to you! Menu planning does make grocery shopping easier.
Thank you for this – it really makes sense to me now that meal planning can save my family a lot of time in the long run. Rather than struggling to figure out what to throw together at the last minute, if we took some time to plan it all out in advance we would save time and be on top of it. Also, I hate ending up with food wasted (leftovers not eaten, ingredients going bad) and this would be a way to help cease all the waste by ensuring we only buy what we need.
I’m glad you found it useful, Jaclyn. I hate wasting food too. Once I started planning menus monthly and planning for leftovers we had much less food waste too which has saved us some money too.
You are far more organized that I am right now that is for certain.
Normally I menu plan for a week at a time and that is only for 2 meals a day. (breakfast for the hubby and dinner for the family). We also include a cheat night so if we want to go out out we can but you know, it’s not proving to be very cost effective and it might be better suited if we went once a month.
I would love to get in to the pre-cooking and get a weeks worth of meals done on a weekend too but that will probably happen later when the kids are a little older.
I am going to have to check out your planners..right now I am using a scrap of paper and it’s not that effective!
Haha! I totally understand, Heather. It wasn’t until recently that I got a little better at being organized. I too would LOVE to do once a month cooking or at least prepare some freezer meals but like you said that will have to wait until the kids are older. I have found that by at least planning for the meat/main dish I am better able to handle planning for a month at a time! I hope the planners help you.