Busy mamas, listen up: it’s time to make meal planning a habit.

Think about how much time you spend figuring out what your family should eat each day.

I think we are all familiar with the feeling of walking over to the pantry and staring at its contents for 10 minutes, then googling recipes to figure out what we can make with the mish-mash of what’s left in our pantry or running out to the store to get the last ingredient needed to make something presentable.

After going through that routine, you might have spent as much as an hour on dinner before you even started cooking it!

And while this may not happen to you every day – you might find yourself in this situation at least a few times a week. That’s why meal planning can really free up a lot of time in your schedule. Here are some tips for how you can make meal planning a habit.

1. Make it part of your schedule

The first step to making meal planning a habit is scheduling it. Like everything else in your life, having a routine can make all the difference.

Fair warning: the first few times do you do meal plan for the week, it might take a while, but once you’ve got some experience with it, you may only need to set aside around 15 minutes a week for this. If you struggle with picking recipes you might want to have a look at this.

Ideally, this will appear in your weekly schedule very close to the time that you normally do your big grocery shopping trip for the week.

I like doing this doing this on Monday after the weekend, and placing our large supermarket order online to be delivered mid-week, but you do what works for you. Find a place in your schedule where it fits comfortably so you’ll be more likely to stick to it. 

2. Use a calendar to make meal planning a habit

Whether you use a fancy meal planning and recipe app, meal planning templates, or just write it all down with old-fashioned paper and pencil, make a list of what you’re going to eat each day of the week and keep it handy. Personally, I prefer to sticking to one main app where I can as that keep things cleaner and more accessible, and my app of choice is Google calendar.

Your calendar entries should include important details like those nights when you need to pull something out of the freezer to thaw for the next day.

When meal planning, look for opportunities to note meal prep guidance, like how you can plan to chop onions for the chili you’ll have later in the week at the same time that you’re chopping the onions for tomorrow’s salad. I also like to note this in my calendar.

Don’t forget to take into account any activities you have scheduled during the week that could impact dinnertime. The evening of your daughter’s piano recital is the perfect day for a homemade freezer meal, while a less-hectic day is better suited for something that requires more hands-on time.

3. Make organisation part of the process

Being organised is everything when it comes to meal planning.

Before you even get started, you should give your pantry and fridge a complete makeover. Toss expired items, take stock of what you have and devote sections to different types of food. That way, you won’t be rifling around the back of your pantry while the pasta is boiling over looking for that jar of oregano you could swear you saw last week.

Making your grocery list will go a lot faster when you can open the fridge and pantry and easily see at a glance what you’ve got and what you still need.

4. Get your recipes in order

As much as you might like pasta, you and your family certainly don’t want to eat it every single night of the week. A good meal plan will have a variety of foods, and it’s much easier to tick all the food group boxes if your recipes are arranged by type.

Perhaps you’ll have meatless Mondays, two days of poultry, two days of pasta and so on. Organising your recipes with these categories will save you time as you are doing your meal planning.

5. Shop your pantry

Once you’ve got your pantry and fridge organised, you’ll have a great starting point each week when you’re first deciding what you plan to cook. If your potatoes are about to go bad, this might be the week to cook some chicken with mashed potatoes, for example.

6. Be flexible

You know what they say about the best-laid plans, so it’s always good to have a loose backup plan. Do not waste time coming up with an alternative for each night of the week, but it never hurts to have an extra package of pasta or beans on hand for those nights when you just can’t make it all come together like you planned. Being a successful meal planner means that sometimes you fall back on plan B, you’re okay with it, and despite the ups and downs, you keep at it. Why? Because you know meal planning saves you countless hours, no matter what!