Menu Planning

As promised here’s my take on menu planning.

First of all, a confession. I highly recommend menu planning but I do not like menu planning. I find it a pain to have to sit down and write out what we are going to eat for a whole week in advance. But I do it week after week because I like the results of menu planning. That is – peace and efficiency.

Peace because I no longer have to wreck my brains thinking about what to cook and I do not have to answer “What’s for breakfast/lunch/dinner?” many times a day! I just point them to the menu plan on the fridge.

I am also more efficient when I use my menu plan to organise my freezer/fridge. All the food for each day’s meals are labelled and packed together. This way, all I need is to pull out the correct “bundle” to defrost at the end of each day for the next day’s meals. Also, because my grocery list is based on my menu plan I seldom end up with missing ingredients. I say seldom since I do sometimes miss out an item or do not realise that stocks of another item has runned out.

I have written before in So What’s For Dinner? the benefits of menu planning so I will try not to repeat myself here It is really a lifesaver and another useful tool in making sure that our household runs smoothly. The other tool is, of course, having routines as mentioned in Schedules and Routines.

A menu plan is so simple and helpful and yet many moms I know do not use it. There are also many moms who are highly resistant to it. “There’s no spontaneity!” they cry in protest when I suggest it to them. I personally feel spontaneity is overrated. Especially if spontaneity causes mom to feel stressed and worked up.

The only time I survived without a menu plan was when I had only 3 children and lived a 10 minute walk from the wet market which I visited almost daily as it was next to the only playground in the area. I also had a lot more time back then Now I do not have luxury of always popping to the wet market or supermarket to pick up things that I have forgotten to buy.

Actually, one can still be spontaneous with a menu plan as one dish can be swopped for another on the list. Don’t feel like having fish today? Then swop with Thursday’s Beef Stew. What to do with the plan for fried rice now that dh has decided to bring you out for dinner? Push it to the next week. It isn’t carved in stone. It is a tool to help you be more efficient.

Yes, it takes discipline and time to sit and plan and even a mindset change. But if you want your home to run smoothly, you have to invest the time to plan for it to become so.

Try menu planning. And if at first it does not work out, try again! I had to work at it and tweak it many times before being happy with what I have now.

You may be interested in How To Menu Plan coming up next!