Hello everyone! I asked you all a while ago if you’d like to know how I meal prep, and all of you did! So I thought I’d write this post so you can refer back to it if you’d like some meal prep inspiration. Plus a few free handy print outs! It might seem overwhelming at first, but it’s not I promise!! It’s really quite easy after you’ve done the initial set up.
I feel like food prep is SO personal for families/individuals. There is always foods that your family won’t eat, or can’t eat, and it’s hard to give you a meal plan and say ‘here ya go!’. I always think it would be helpful to sign up for one of those meal plans, but I know there are meals in there that my family just won’t eat. So I just figured out my own system.
That being said, Do your own take on this! Everyone food preferences are different, so make sure you are making/buying things that you and your family are going to eat. Not what you WISH they would eat. It will save you so much stress and frustration.
Weekly Meal Prep Planner
I showed you all this on my Instagram stories, but this is the meal planner from target is what I use to write out my meal plans! I HIGHLY recommend you at least write down your plan for the week/month, I even attached a example of my own that I’ve made here that you can print out for yourselves!
And don’t worry, you don’t need to ‘stick to the schedule’, it’s mostly just so you know your meal options for the week and that you have the groceries/ingredients to make them. So if you get to Wednesday and you didn’t want stir fry, just switch it out for a different meal!
Also, make sure you note what’s going on in your personal lives before you plan your week out. You don’t want to have to make a complicated dinner on a busy night!
Meal Ideas
I’ve found it helpful to write down a BUNCH of ideas for dinners/lunches/breakfasts my family will eat and keep it with my weekly meal prep. That way if I’m stuck on ideas for dinner or need some prompting, this will give me ideas! It’s a simple thing to do, but it’s really helped me remember what our family loves!
I’ve made this one as an example! There are about 30 dinner options to choose from and some lunch/breakfast/treats ideas too. Dinner is usually the only meals I really structure, and then kind of wing it for the other meals. Unless there is something special going on that I have planned!
Frequent Groceries
While this isn’t totally necessary, I LOVE having this list when I am doing my grocery shopping! I do a lot of pick ups, so this helps jog my memory when I’m not in the stores (grocery shopping with children is hard!).
I just made a general list of things we frequently buy from the store to make sure I have everything for our meals. If you do do grocery pick ups like I do, Walmart has a section called ‘frequently bought’ or ‘your items’ that you can refer to that will show you what you’ve bought in the past! It’s really nice to have around when you are planning.
Here is an example of my categories to help!
Then you are set for future meal prepping!
To sum all of this up, this is basically what I do when I am meal planning:
- Pick the meals I want & write them down on one of the days of the week.
- Make sure we write the groceries we need on the shopping list to make the meals.
- Refer back to the list to make sure we have all the other household items!
I hope this helps to give you all some inspiration for your own meal prep! Definitely do what’s best for YOUR family! If some of these don’t work for you that’s ok, just find something that works for you! This process might change for me later as our family grows, but this works fine for now.
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or concerns at the bottom of this post!
xo, Jamie
