How I Meal Plan

Cooking is not one of my talents.  But even harder than actual meal preparation, is deciding:

"What's for dinner?????"

When my love and I were newly weds, I had 7 dinners that I rotated through every week.  

Sad.  

Fast forward 10 or so years, and I've finally mastered this meal planning thing.  I've been using this system for over a year now.  It makes me happy.  :)

Here is a picture of the inside of my cupboard:

I got the baskets, the little hooks, and the clips all at the dollar store.  

New Years Day 2015 I sat down and made a list.  

Every dinner idea I could think of.  (Not a very long list.)

Then I got on Pinterest.  

BUT, I do NOT recommend adding a bunch of "new" dinner recipes to your list.  You do not want to set yourself up for a whole bunch of Pinterest fails.  But it was a great place to look at pictures of food and jog my memory.  

My goal was to come up with 30 dinner ideas.  Which I did.  But this system is totally still doable with 20 or even less.  

I typed up my list in nice big bold letters, and printed it out on card-stock to help make them a little more sturdy.  But look a little closer and check out what is typed below each dinner idea.

A little ingredient list for each idea.  So every time I'm heading to Wal-mart, (or whatever your grocery store of choice is) I open up my cupboard and jot down a shopping list in 60 seconds flat.  

Fast forward to dinner time.

I open up my cupboard and I know I have the ingredients to make those 7 different meals.  I just have to pick which one I have time for.  

Here is where little baskets come in.  Once I make a meal, I take the paper off the clip and put it in the upper basket.  All my other dinner idea papers are stored in the lower basket.  When I'm ready to make that instant shopping list, I just grab new dinner ideas out of the lower basket.

New Years Day this year?  I freshened things up a bit.  Tossed out meals we ended up not really liking.  And added a few new ones I had though of.  

As I said: This makes me happy.  Hope it can help make someone else happy too!  :)