Creating a year’s worth of meal plans, the easy way! – S2, E38

In today’s episode, Jami is going to share her fun plan for making a year's worth of meal plans and how to do it simply! She shares 5 steps she's using to create these plans. Listen in! Listen to the Podcast: You can find all the links and notes for this episode below! Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer. My Goal: I am really excited about this. Over the next month and a half, my goal is to make a year’s worth of meal plans so that I can put my meal planning on autopilot. But I’m not actually making 52 weeks of meal plans.  I am going to make rotating, seasonal meal plans. I will take each season, broken down into 3 months and create one 4-week meal plan for that season. So summer will have the summer meal plan which consists of 4 weeks of meals, without a ton of repetition in meals. So June, I’ll pull out my summer meal plan and go. July hits and the 4 weeks start over and then again in August.  Once September hits, it’s time to pull out the Fall meal plan. I’m planning on adding in some easy changes for when your week gets off built right into the meal plan, but in this simple way, I’m going to not only be able to develop a year’s worth of meal plans very easily, but also do it seasonally.  How I’m going to do it:  Figure out some seasonal guidelines. Things like: more ice cream recipes and fresh produce in the summer, pumpkin, gourds, and squashes in the Fall, soups and comfort food in the winter, and so forth I also want to plan around things like: There’s more time for baking in the fall & winter and lots of fun holidays to do so, I don’t want to heat the summer up as much from the oven, so more easy crockpot, bbq, and simple recipes.  Pantry  Put together my first 4-week meal plan, and then spend 2 months adjusting it. This is where I think the simple part of this will come in. I can spend the time up front to make my first meal plan and then spend a month or two tweaking it. As I pull it out again for the next month, I’ll be able to adjust it and take notes!  Put together an individual binder per season. I will have the full meal plan, a calendar view, all the recipes, prep ahead instructions, and grocery list in each binder. This will also allow me to stick other seasonal recipes I come across or want to try into the binder that’s easy to pull out when we need it.  I’m going to aim for a simple version first. As I play with it, I can perfect it and even add to it if I want. What I don’t want to happen is that I make this incredible meal plan that there is no way I can follow.  I’m doing the pre-work right now in June. I’m gathering recipes, starting to think through season changes, and getting the printables all created and ready to go. July 5th is when I’m starting. I’m committing to 20-30 minutes per day to get my first meal plan totally created and in progress. I don’t have hours a day to commit to this right now. So I’m going to just steal a few minutes each day to work on it and I hope you join us!!  Links & Resources: Join our private community to chat about this podcast episode: FindingJoyCommunity.com Our Sponsor: For 50% off your first Care/of order, go to TakeCareOf.com and enter code home50. Our Sponsor: Go to GreenChef.com/homemaking60 and use code homemaking60 to get 60% off plus free shipping.