Easy Family Meal Plan: How To Plan Ahead

Organization is key as a parent but sometimes little hacks help along the way, especially when meal planning. This is my easy family meal plan menu that I use to stay organized with dinner.

Dinner time is such an important meal, especially when you can eat together as a family.

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However, sometimes staying organized and planning a menu can be stressful. Here is what I do to help keep me on track with easy family meal plan menus.

I use this template (shown below), but I put my own spin on it. FREE DOWNLOADABLE TEMPLATES HERE.

Instead of writing ideas in the squares and printing a new sheet weekly, or purchasing an expensive (but cute) chalkboard to write down the dinner menu for the week, I use sticky notes.

I printed out this weekly menu with the squares and days of the week and I put it in a picture frame.

This way the frame adds a little bit of flare and chicness to the menu. Plus with the glass window, you can either use a dry erase marker to mark the dinner item of that day or sticky notes (which is what I do).

I take these little 2×2 sticky notes and I write the dinner plan for that night.

Example: Monday I might write down, instant pot spaghetti. Tuesday, tacos. Wednesday, meatball subs. etc. You get the point.

So that way, I have a meal plan for every night of the week. (you could totally make more squares and do every meal of the day or even just breakfasts or lunches if that’s more what you need help with).

Plus if one day I’m not feeling whatever item I wrote down, its easy to just unstick the sticky note and switch around the days.

Nothing is set in stone and its an easy fix if something comes up and we won’t be home for dinner, or if we just aren’t feeling that item that day.

If you don’t want to get a frame and make it all “fancy”, you could totally get one of these dry erase sleeves and use the same concept.

I’ve used those before too, but now I mainly use those for my kids chore charts (see here).

Plus it helps to have something the same night every week planned out.

For example, I know my family loves tacos, so every Tuesday we try and incorporate some sort of taco themed meal every Tuesday.

Or Thursdays I know my husband loves having my homemade meatball subs so I make those every Thursday night.

Having set in stone meals is a great way to eliminate the need to come up with something fresh and new weekly.

It’s good to change things up, but its also good to have some set in stone meal ideas to fall back on that are family approved.

This way you have an easy family meal plan for the week.

Hopefully this menu plan tip will help you stay organized and on top of your family meal plan for each week. For more organization hacks and free templates, read here.