Organize Your Life Day 5: Meals

“What’s for dinner?”

The question can strike fear in any homemaker’s heart.

Too often the fridge is almost empty, the pantry uninspiring, and the night too short to make something before rushing out the door for the evening’s activities.

However, with a little planning and organization, even the busiest nights can include a wholesome, home-prepared meal, without the stress.

Welcome to Organize Your Life Day 5: Meals.

This is part of a mini-series on overcoming parenting (and life!) overwhelm and stress by organizing your life. Click here to see the introduction and links to other days.

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Not Just a Checkmark

Sometimes life gets so crazy that we have to ask ourselves, “Did we eat today?” rather than “Did we eat healthily today?” However, the more organized we are in life, the more we can lean toward that second, pretty important question as well.

From my health teacher perspective, I could talk hours about how to nourish our families. Here’s a good start for raising healthy eaters, but we’ll save the bulk of it for later. Today, we’re boiling nutrition down to two key words: variety and moderation.

When it comes to nutrition we want to provide our families with a wide variety of foods. Each food contains different nutrients, and we need a balance of those to be healthy. Don’t worry so much about daily intake but rather averages over a week or a month. It’s helpful to think about eating the rainbow. Is your family consuming a variety of foods of all different colors?

Moderation is the second key for healthy families. Even healthy foods eaten to extreme become unhealthy, and even sweets and treats can have a place in a healthy diet. Aim to fill-up on healthy choices before offering the treats. Make your normal snack choices nutritious ones like whole fruits and vegetables rather than chips. Try to teach everyone to eat to a point of comfort rather than stuffing.

Evaluate your family’s eating habits regarding variety, moderation, and anything else that is important to you.

In your Workbook or journal, rate your family on a scale of how healthy you feel you are eating these days. One is “Yikes! Not healthy at all!” Ten is “Doing awesome! I could teach a class!”

Next, assess how content you are with that rating. If you feel good about your eating habits, wonderful! If you are unhappy with your rating, list one to three specific ways you would like to change.

The Key to Low-Stress Meal Preparation

By far, the best way I have found to fit healthy, home-prepared meals into busy lives is meal planning. A little forethought allows you to have healthy choices on hand, a variety on your menu, and the necessary time to prepare such meals.

While I enjoy skimming other people’s meal plans for ideas, I have found that creating our own simple meal plans works better for my family. They are catered to our family’s needs, preferences, and budget. If you do want to see a sample plan to get you going, here is one from our family that I used for several months.

I have used both weekly and monthly meal plans with success. Weekly meal plans allow for a lot of variety. However, sometimes those weeks come around really fast! For the busiest seasons of life, monthly (four week rotation) meal plans seem to work best. You can even reuse that monthly plan, which means you plan meals once today and don’t think about it again for months!

Steps to Successful Meal Planning

Make a master list of Family Approved Meal Choices in writing so you are not continually reinventing the wheel. Supplement that list with Pinterest if wanted.
Choose a weekly or monthly meal plan. Click here for a monthly meal plan template and a sample monthly meal plan from our family.
Evaluate your family schedule as to which nights need quick or make-ahead meals.
Choose meals from your master list and plug them into your calendar. Also consider how you will use leftovers.
Write your grocery shopping list.

A Few Tips

I typically only meal plan for dinners. We have about six breakfasts we cycle through. Lunches are super simple here as well. School lunches are some kind of sandwich, wrap, or main dish with a fruit and a veggie. Sometimes we throw in chips or a small treat. Those eating lunch at home usually have leftovers. When going to the grocery store, I just refill breakfast and lunch items as needed.
When I use a monthly meal plan, I usually put our favorite meals into the rotation and then once a week or every other week plan for a “New” meal. These are the nights I will experiment with a new recipe. This introduces variety into our menu, while also leaving me only one night a week to think about before shopping.
Plan your main dish. Choose seasonal, on-sale items for your sides when you are at the grocery store.
Go with simplicity. Every meal need not be social media worthy or a brand new recipe. It’s fun to experiment and go gourmet once in a while, but do not feel pressure to do so. Remember your choices from Day 3. How much time are you willing to give for meal preparation?
Consider starting traditions like Taco Tuesday or Pizza and Family Movie Night Fridays. Traditions build family bonds and, in this case, also simplify life.
Once in a while invite your kids to help you meal plan. They love being involved in running the household. I’m also always interested in what meals they choose. Have them help in the kitchen as often as possible. It makes for great one-on-one time, while teaching them important life skills.

Take the time now to follow the five steps listed above and in your Workbook and create your own meal plan.

Meal Plans are Great Until…

Meal plans are great until they don’t work. As highly as I recommend meal planning, the system does have some limitations. What happens when your child wakes up super sick the day you planned on grocery shopping? How about when you get home later than expected from a school event, and now there’s not time to make the dinner you planned?

Well, what happens is we plan for that too. (Did I mention we hope to prevent as much stress as possible?!)

Make a list of three to five quick meals that you can always have on hand and prepare last minute. These are not in your meal plan but serve as back-up. They should be shelf-stable, frozen, or last a long time so you’re likely to have some in the fridge even if it’s been a while since you grocery shopped (like cheese).

Some examples of last minute meals include canned chili and crackers, cheese quesadillas, spaghetti and a jar of sauce, homemade frozen burritos, or pancakes and canned fruit. Your last minute meals may not always be the healthiest. However, odds are they are healthier and less expensive than take-out.

Write down your last-minute meals, and add any necessary items to your grocery shopping list.

Even More Comfort

The last thing we’ll talk about for overcoming meal overwhelm is the comfort in knowing you are prepared for anything. This calm comes from having food storage. Food storage includes having water and basic foods in case of emergency such as natural disasters, snow storms, or job loss.

Your food storage does not need to be fancy. Focus first on survival and add variety as your means allow. Beans and rice are a great nutrient dense, longer-lasting example. For basic food storage information, here is a government site.

A good starting point is to determine what your family would need for one month. Add a few things each shopping trip, especially purchasing when needed items are on sale, until you have a month’s worth of storage. This will be foods your family regularly eats and should be rotated into your normal meals so it doesn’t expire or waste.

Slowly increase that supply until you have the basic necessities for one year. This food storage calculator is super helpful in determining quantities and what types of food are life-sustaining.

Take the time right now to create your family food storage plan. Additionally, add meal planning or any related tasks to your Home Management Living List. Record any thoughts, take-aways, or future action items from Day 5.

The Real Meal Success

Feeding a family can be hard work, and there is no break. Don’t get down about the times when your perfect meal goes awry, kids throw tantrums instead of saying, “Thank you,” or you end up with an unplanned trip in the drive-through.

Instead, focus on those things you are doing well and strive to do more of them. Recognize the joy it is to provide healthy food for those you love, and express gratitude for your abundance.

The real meal success comes as we prevent the stress and are able to focus instead on those incredible Littles whose tummies we are striving to fill. Treasure the times you spend together around the table. Take advantage of those moments to get to know your children better, share stories, and laugh together. Those calmer, bonding times surrounding meals will increase the more organized you feel. Today’s work is the perfect starting point. May your meals with your Littles be nutritious, delicious, and stress-free!

Do you need more help organizing or executing mealtimes? What other food-related challenges do you have? Email or let me know in the comments. I’d love to help.

Got a stack of dirty dishes after all of those awesomely planned meals? Bring it on! Tomorrow we tackle all things dirty…Organize Your Life Day 6: Cleaning.