“What’s for dinner tonight?”

I HATE THAT QUESTION. It sends me to an immediate place of stress. Because seriously, who has time to deal with dinner?! But yes, I know my people need to be fed. So… what do we do?

Let me be very real for a second. I am not a natural planner. I love to have very few plans and love to make decisions based on what I “feel like” doing at that moment. As it turns out, my style is fun for a bit, but gets old when you actually need to be efficient and make some things happen. Like dinner.

Luckily, I married a BIG. TIME. PLANNER. Damon wakes up on Saturdays and asks me for a detailed agenda for the day before we even get downstairs for breakfast. This is super stressful for me but after 12 years of marriage, I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of a good plan.

One of the best habits we created after having kids was meal planning. We’re probably not masters at it, but I thought I’d share how we handle meal planning, in case it gives you some ideas that could be helpful in your own household!

We do our grocery shopping on the weekend, so on Saturday mornings, we usually sit down and I write out the days of the week with “lunch” and “dinner” columns next to each day. We decide on Brooks’ lunches and our family dinner plans, and then create a separate list of the grocery items needed for each meal. We then think about breakfast, snacks, sodas, and any other needs outside of lunches and dinners, and add those items to the list.

Then, we load it all into the Wunderlist app, where we have some shared lists. One is “Groceries” and one is “Meal Planning” (I know – we’re so creative). Damon does the grocery shopping, so he loads the grocery list into Wunderlist and lists the items in the order he can find them in the store.

This method totally works for us and it has made it so much easier to answer the “what’s for dinner?” question! Let me hear your meal planning tips… what is working for you these days??