If you have a family at home, you’ve experienced those haphazard days and weeks of running hither and yon and getting nothing accomplished. One stressful thing for families is that age old question:
“What’s for supper?”
Cramming everything into a busy day then producing a meal that pleases every palate and fills every belly can be difficult, stressful, and frustrating. Take some of the pressure off with family meal planning.
Here’s a few reasons why it’s so vital and important:
Planning Meals Can Cut the Budget
Your food budget can certainly take a hit when you don’t plan your meals and shopping. It’s too easy to go to the grocery store and just pick up items without a plan for what you are going to do with them. This results in a pantry filled with assorted items that need other things to make a meal — except that the other things are still at the store! That means you have to make extra trips and spend extra money and it can be a budget buster.
Family meal planning every week and making a shopping list based upon that plan means you buy exactly what you need — no more, no less and you will spend less money doing it.
Tip: Check out the Favado App to find the best prices on grocery items!
Having Meals Planned Cuts Preparation Time
How much time do you spend wandering around the kitchen looking in the fridge, the freezer and the pantry trying to decide what to make for the evening meal? Too often we act out this scenario half an hour before we were planning to eat so we spend too much time deciding what to make, figuring out if we have what we need, then putting it all together. This lack of planning can result in too much time being spent on preparation and a frazzled Mom ready to call it a night. Putting together a plan for your meals means that when it’s time to make supper, you know what you need and you just grab it and go. The meal will be ready in no time and hungry bellies will be filled!
Tip: Check out how to save time and money with preparing meals for your freezer!
Planned Meals Result in More Family Time
Once you’ve cut out all of that time deciding what to make for supper, you end up with more time for your family. Mom, instead of being tired and worn out by the time you finish deciding what to cook, pulling it all together and getting it cooked, having a plan in place will result in more time available to enjoy your family.
Don’t let meals for your family turn into a chore that exhausts you. Spend a little time each week planning what you will feed your hungry hoards then make your shopping list. Have it all planned out so you can get everyone fed and then enjoy down time with the family instead of chore time for meals.
Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook (NYM Series) is one of my FAVORITE freezer recipe cook books!
What tips do you have about family meal planning you can share?
Did you enjoy this post? Find more money saving tips here.
