Meal Planning

Homeschooling, home management, appointments — we juggle it all and still need to get meals on the table every day! In this podcast, we’ll look at some tips for staying on top of the meal planning so you can keep juggling all of the other balls a little more easily!

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When you have kids, manage a home and then also homeschool, your proverbial plate is  rather full. So when it comes to getting dinner on the table, I wanna share a few tips on how I meal planned, what I prioritized, and a few simple hacks. 

There are many different suggestions you’ll find on Pinterest or through a Google search, ranging from elaborate to simple. I’d like to share with you some things I did when I was juggling maintaining the house, raising the kids, pregnancy, exhaustion, grading papers…you know the rest!

Recognize your stage of life.

What is your life like right now, and what needs to be the priority? For instance, is it more important in this phase of life to save money or time? Which do you have more of? This is your launching point for figuring out how to plan.

  1. Remember to prioritize making a plan! It’s easy to let lack of planning throw you into a frenzy, leading you to rush to the grocery store and spend more money than necessary—or see pizza delivery at your door much more often than not! For me, the easiest time was when I was doing my homeschool planning for the week because I knew just how busy each day would be. From there I’d create my shopping list.
  2. Decide if you’re trying to save money or save time. This will determine what your meals are going to be! If you’re short on time, you might choose to utilize a meal rotation plan. This could be having the same meal every week on Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Friday, or every day), or you could rotate every two weeks or every month. You might even have a week full of 15-minute meals. This gives you a structure and a reference that keeps you from being overwhelmed and allows you to implement it quickly.
  3. Consider breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I went light and easy with low-sugar cereals or eggs for breakfast, followed by fruits or some type of low-sugar snack. Then for lunch, I tried to do leftovers as often as possible. For the days when leftovers weren’t available, I always kept bread, peanut butter, and jelly on hand for an easy light lunch.

Ultimately, it’s critical to remember that the most important part of meal planning is the planning!