Meal planning

For years I have loved meal planning because I'm a big planner!! I love knowing what is coming next and having a schedule to stick to. While I was in college and living with my husband (fiance at the time), I was also working nights and weekends. I would write out the list of meals that I was going to be making for the upcoming 2 weeks, while keeping in mind the nights that I wouldn't have to cook due to having leftovers or working. Then I would plan my grocery list based on what I needed to make those meals and would make a big shopping trip once every 2 weeks. I would have to shop for small things like eggs, bread, or milk before my big trip, but it was nice to just have to make one huge trip.

I continued this routine for quite a while. Even when Big E was born I was still doing this but not as often as I used to. Then last year I found a printable cleaning schedule. It had one page for each week of the year and on the bottom part of it there was a meal planning section. I used this sometimes, but as the year went on I used it less and less.

Recently I started a bullet journal and it has been great for me!! One of the spreads I make each week is a meal planning page and a shopping list page. I've found it easier to just shop for meals once a week. We just got a Sam's Club near us this past fall and to say we love shopping there is an understatement! We get 2 gallons of milk each week along with some produce and other various things. We have also been trying to go to Aldi to get the things we don't need to get in bulk. And then there's Walmart, we do some of our grocery shopping there as well.

Here is my current spread that I just started and am filling in with our meals for this coming week. My hubby will be away for work and I have a 5 day work week, so I'm definitely going to be planning some easy meals.

And here is one from 2 weeks ago. You can see how I made some changes to it and then I can just take my whole journal with me and cross out each item as I add it to my cart.

How do you plan out what you are making for dinner each week? Leave me some comments!