How I Meal Plan For Real Life

No weekly planning OR prepping!

I hate meal planning. Truly! 

This is the story of how I figured out how to both meal plan and not meal plan at the same time. All while getting homemade, dairy + soy free dinners on the table every night. Because there’s nothing worse than getting to 5 o’clock and having those little (or big) eyes looking at you asking what’s for dinner…. and you have no answer. 

I’ll be honest, I was not prepared for all the demands of being a mom. Most days I didn’t even eat three meals myself, and now I’m providing three (or more) meals for small humans who depend on me. It was so overwhelming! It took me about five years to realize that if I chose to do something about dinner before 5 o’clock, I could remove some of the stress in my life. 

So like most people do, I started planning meals every week, then doing the shopping. I thought this was the answer to all my meal stress–I was wrong. So so very wrong. 

The weekend would roll around and I didn’t want to plan another week of meals. I was exhausted from cooking last week’s meals (and, let’s be honest, failing at following my plan!). It seemed just as futile to do it again, but I kept trying. Week after week for years I was on the same merry-go-round: plan a week, everything goes wrong, improvise, last minute grocery runs, stress abounds. I thought it would get better and easier with time, but it didn’t.

Add to it that I didn’t have any clue how long it took to make meals. I thought I could start cooking at 5:00, be done by 5:30 and smile while doing it. Wrong again! I had to start cooking by 4 o’clock most days and it took until 6:00 to have dinner on the table with all the interruptions (iykyk). 

Instead of accepting this as my inevitable, I kept tweaking until I figured out the formula for easy meal planning, less meal planning, and no all-day-meal-prep. 

How to Meal Plan without Meal Planning or Prepping

1. Find your family’s rhythm. For us, this is me cooking for our family Tuesday through Friday–making enough for leftovers. Monday nights we cook for our small group, every Friday we do pizzas, and on the weekends I do not cook. Yes you read that right, no weekend cooking at all. It’s AMAZING!
2. Plan a MONTH at a time, not every week. When there’s something I dread, I try to do it less often. Planning once a month, means I do it then I’m DONE. Plus 52 times a year is a LOT more than 12 times a year to do something I can’t stand! 
   Once you know which days of the week you’re going to cook, choose meals for those days. We have 3 meals that we eat every month (stir fry, chicken enchilada bake, and breakfast) then after that, I ask my husband and my kids to give me 2-3 meals they want, and I pick a few that I would like to fill in the gaps.
3. Shop a week at a time, except meat. I have paid for Walmart+ because it works best for our family to have a shop delivered to us once a week on Monday morning (maybe I’ll share why another time). On the first Monday, I order all the meat for the whole month. [If we had a Costco nearby, I would go there once a month instead.] Then I order any other grocery and household items I’ll need for that week. If I don’t need it that week, I don’t order it–this alone saves me so much money! 
   After I put all the weekly groceries away, I take 20 minutes to portion out the meat. Ordering in bulk saves me money, and pre-chopping/portioning the meat saves me time. I put everything in gallon freezer bags and straight into the freezer. This cuts at least 20 minutes off my cooking time every night! 
4. Adjust as needed. Life happens and there are always things coming up that change our plans. VERY often, I switch Tuesday’s meal to Wednesday, or swap next week’s Tuesday meal for this week (I do this while I’m ordering for the week, since I know better what’s happening now than when I set the plan). Truthfully, it’s rare that I cook a meal on the exact day I intended it. Keeping the meal plan on the fridge means I don’t have to think about what to make instead of what was scheduled–I have a short list of things to choose from and my family wants. 

I print a calendar for the month–you can join my email list to get a blank calendar sent to you every month!

And a little tip: point out when you make a meal your kid requested! My kids get so excited “this is my meal mommy!” and they feel so loved. Then when it’s something they don’t like, I’ll say “This is the meal I picked out for the month just like you picked ____. It’s okay if you don’t like it. We can like different things, but this is what’s for dinner.”

This is what works for me. It may not work for you! Maybe just one or two of these steps works for you family–take what you like, give it a try, and keep adjusting until you find your family’s success! 

Would you like me to plan to first two weeks of meals for you? Grab my ready-to-go meal plan here. Complete with breakfasts, lunches, snacks, dinners and a matching grocery list!

If you have any questions at all, I’m here and my inbox is open. I am honored to be part of your journey!

With a full heart,

Heather Wall
That Dairy Free Mom