how to meal plan for a month in less than 30 minutes

For the past few years I’ve meal planned a week at a time. While that was helpful and definitely better than what I used to do (no meal plan at all and just deciding day to day) I found it to be a laborious process. Each week I spent forever trying to think of what meals we’d had recently, what we hadn’t had in a while, and deciding on what to put on the plan. Then after that I still had to look up the recipes and make the grocery list. It took forever and we ended up eating the same things over and over.

A few months ago I decided to see if I could meal plan for a whole month at once. It turned out to be way easier than I expected and I absolutely love it!! Thirty minutes of work is all it takes at the beginning of the month and then we’re all set. Each week when it’s time to make the grocery list I don’t have to think about what we’re eating – I just look at the meal plan and make our grocery list accordingly. It’s been wonderful!

The first time you make your monthly meal plan will take the longest (though still not too terribly long), subsequent months will be much quicker!

How to meal plan for a month

The first thing to do is make a list of meals that you and your family like and/or some meals you’d like to try. Shoot for 30ish meals if you can come up with that many.

Get your calendar out – you can put these in your planner or on a wall calendar or whatever suits your needs. I go online and search something like “January 2020 calendar free printable” and print one of those (this is the one I used). I’m sure there are cute ones on etsy too but I just go the free and quick route.

Now look at the calendar and start filling in dates you’ll be gone where you know you won’t need to make dinner (church events, date nights, whatever) or any important dates that might have a special dinner (birthdays, holiday, etc.)

Once that’s done you’re ready to fill in the meals! Take the list of meals you made and start writing them on your calendar.

Some people follow a theme (meatless Mondays, Italian food on Tuesday, Mexican food on Thursdays, pizza on Fridays, etc.) and that’s an easy way to plan if you like that route.

I don’t plan out every day with a theme but I do have some guidelines that help me with my planning. On Sunday night we always have soup so that we can come home from church to a meal that’s quick to feed everyone and get them to bed. Wednesdays are something quick before church, Monday through Thursday I assign meals that are not super time consuming and ones that I do the bulk of the work since Michael works late those days, Friday and Saturday Michael is off work so I use those days to do meals that are either more involved (and so it’s helpful for me to have him to watch the kids while I cook) or ones where he does the bulk of the cooking.

In addition to writing down what meal we’re having I also include page numbers and book abbreviations to let us know what cookbook it’s in, if necessary. The majority of our recipes are from one of the Trim Healthy Mama cookbooks and it makes things so much easier if I have the book and page number listed on the calendar!

I post the calendar on the fridge so we can easily glance at it and see what we’re having. Michael would really like me to move it to a digital version at some point so we could also access it on our phones but I haven’t gotten that far yet ;)

Of course this is very flexible. Things come up every month where we need to change meals around and that’s fine but it gives a general framework that saves so much time! Each week when I sit down to make the grocery list I grab the calendar, look at what meals are assigned, and make a list of what ingredients I need.

During the month I also make notes right on the calendar of what things we didn’t like so we don’t repeat them later.

After you finish a month – rinse and repeat. Print another calendar, take your list and/or the previous month’s calendar, and fill it in again. I keep mine fairly similar. If we had tacos the first week of December then we’ll probably have tacos the first week of January too. That keeps everything spaced about a month apart.

You could absolutely make a list of more than 30 meals if you want a lot of variety but I find that rotating through the same 30 (with a few changes each month) is fine for us and we don’t get tired of any meals when we only eat them once a month. Likewise, if you have a favorite meal you might want to put that on the calendar for more than once a month.

I also tried planning breakfast, lunch, and snacks a month at a time but that was too much for me. I like those to be more flexible. We tend to eat the same things over and over for our other meals and a lot of times lunch depends on what leftovers we have from the night before. But I do make a list of meals I want to make or try though so that I don’t draw a blank when I’m making the grocery list.

Sometimes at the beginning of the week I’ll make a meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, and snacks (plus the dinners from the monthly plan). I don’t always do that but it helps me stay on track, especially when I’m sticking hard to Trim Healthy Mama and want to make sure I’m prepared.