Meal plans are nothing new, if you Googled them right now you’d get over 23 million results, 23 million! So there’s plenty out there to look at. Families have had set days for specific meals for years, it’s an excellent time and money saver., as it eliminates this kind of situation…

“So what do you fancy for tea”?

“I don’t know what do you fancy?”

“I don’t know, what do we have?”

Spend 15 minutes browsing the fridge, freezer, cupboards before settling on beans on toast or a takeaway…

I have no issues with either of those options, I love beans on toast and who doesn’t love the odd takeaway?

This can very quickly become boring and expensive though.

My need for meal planning comes from keeping some sort of structure in the home, basically if there is no set routine nothing will ever get done. It all saves me time and money.

It saves me time because I know exactly what I’m cooking for tea ever day, that way I can have everything prepared the day before and I’m not flapping around the kitchen every day at 5 pm, unless I want to flap around for fun, but that’s beside the point.

It also saves me so much time and money when it comes to doing the shopping too, I know exactly what I’m buying every month, which means I don’t end up buying unnecessary extras.

The meals that we have are quick and easy to cook. They’re all relatively healthy, depending on how they are cooked.

I will usually cook the meals even if we won’t all be there to eat them, if the meal can be saved and frozen, e.g. chilli, corned beef casserole.

I don’t follow recipes, they’re all fairly straight forward, self explanatory meals anyway.

I’ve added the meal plan that we follow to give you some ideas. The possibilities are pretty much endless though, depending on your budget and expertise.

Your meal plan can be completely personalised to your own needs, I have it set out for 2 weeks because that works for us and gives us enough options to keep everyone happy. I stick to these same meals because I know they will be eaten and this way I know what shopping I need. For some more in depth meal plans, with slightly more variety, check out Pinterest, or like I said at the top of the post. just Google it, loads of options!