Meal Planning The Easy Way!

Don't laugh. This is my brand-new way of planning meals for an entire month.

Yep. I've been using this for two weeks and loving it! Before I go any further let me explain.

I've tried every way to organize under the sun. Evernote. Old-School recipe box. Binders. iPhone Calendar. But nothing has worked for me.

See what happens is I try new recipes all the time. I hit on one that both hubs and I love, and for a few weeks or months I continue to make it. Then I forget about it. I never make it again! Sometimes I'm looking through an old cookbook or a binder and I'll find a recipe I've marked as "delicious!" with a date -- several years earlier. And I have no memory of ever having made that meal.

For the last year I've been using a small magnetic whiteboard calendar and it was pretty good. I really liked it but it wasn't helping with my forgetting what meals we liked that I could put on a rotation.

Then hubs suggested I create magnetic labels that I could move around on our fridge-freezer. He suggested each label have the recipe title and the list of ingredients so that the weekly shopping list would be easy to compile.

The blue arrow points to the week we are in

Creating the labels wasn't easy. The template didn't quite work with the magnetic printable sheets but I worked it out and today I finished. I used larger 3 1/2 x 2 inch labels for the meals. I printed smaller labels for the side dishes which are every vegetable we like plus rolls, rice, and other assorted sides. Then I ordered write on/wipe off labels with coloured borders for the headings I wanted. It was too much white on white without them!

Luckily I have an odd kitchen which is almost two rooms. This fridge-freezer is large and it's in the side room/area of my main kitchen so it's not visible unless you walk into that end of the room. Otherwise it might be too much "in my face"

Besides, my main fridge has 4 doors, is stainless steel and magnets don't stick to it.

I did have to use part of my microwave for some of the small labels I created for "leftovers" and "order-in".