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8 Meal Planning Tips for Busy Moms
Nov 1, 2024

Bethany Brewer

Your schedule might be at the point where it doesn’t feel like you have the time to cook even one meal. Maybe you’ve considered meal planning, but it either doesn’t feel achievable or you’ve tried it before and it didn’t work out.
Juggling cooking with everything else you need to do can be overwhelming, but when you break down meal planning into small parts, you’ll always be able to have something ready for dinner.
1. Schedule Consistent Meal Planning AND Meal Prep Time
Sometimes just looking for recipes is as exhausting as actually cooking them. If this is something you struggle with, try scheduling both a designated meal planning time and prepping time.
Meal planning is making a list of which recipes you’ll cook, which days you’ll cook them, and what ingredients the recipe will need. Whether this takes you a handful of minutes or over an hour, try to schedule a time every week to plan for the following week.
Meal prepping might be more time-consuming, but still try to keep to a consistent schedule, allowing yourself some wiggle room to move your cooking timeslot around if other plans come up. This is the time to take care of all the chopping, measuring and maybe even mixing that each recipe needs. Organize the ingredients into their own containers and be sure to label them with sticky notes, if you can. Keep them together in the fridge and cabinet so you won’t get the recipes’ containers mixed up.
Some people think of dinner as the big meal of the day, but if you want to go the extra mile, write down what breakfast and lunch will be too. Even if it’s just overnight oats for breakfast and a sandwich with prepackaged crackers for lunch, knowing that you have all meals covered for the next week will be a weight off your mind.
2. Find Recipes that are Quick, Easy and Repeatable
When looking for recipes, keep an eye out for the ones without a long list of ingredients to shorten your meal-prepping timeslot. Also, be sure to double-check the cooking time. You don’t want to commit to a recipe, and then realize it needs 12 hours to prepare.
Most of all, create a rotating menu of repeat meals. If you’re just starting out, you might be excited about the idea of trying all new recipes every week. But trust me, you will not feel like that after a few weeks. Trying a couple of new recipes each month is always fun, but sticking to the family favorites that you know how to cook will save you quite a few headaches.
3. Get the Right Kitchen Equipment
An absolute lifesaver in your meal-prepping journey will be investing in the right kitchen equipment. Insta pots, slow cookers and air fryers are easy and do the work for you. Your only job is to throw the ingredients in, then the nifty device will do its magic. There are entire cookbooks that exist for each device, or you could do a quick internet search for “air fryer recipes” or the like if you’re looking for a place to start.
4. Opt for Grocery Pick-up
If you’re trying to save time, this is the way to go. Many grocery stores will bring your groceries to your car for a small fee, like Aldi. At some stores, like Walmart, the fee is waived for orders over a certain amount. This will cut wandering around the grocery store and waiting in the check-out line off of your schedule.
5. Find the Right Ingredients
Many recipes use the same ingredients. If you plan these recipes back-to-back, it’ll be less time at the store, and maybe even less time chopping and measuring. To spend less time than you’d like on chopping ingredients, see if your store has options for pre-chopped fruits and veggies, and switch to those instead. Breakfast and lunch might also be a strain to prep for, but you can always buy healthy prepackaged foods like yogurts and nuts.
6. Use Leftovers and Freezers to Your Advantage
Weekly meal prepping might be too much of a commitment for your schedule right now, and that’s okay. Most meals, especially stews, soups and casseroles, freeze well. Then, whenever you’re too busy to meal prep, you can pull a dish out of the freezer and defrost it.
Whether or not you want to freeze meal batches, it’s always a good idea to have a list of recipes that still taste good the next day. If your family has a meal they like, prepping and cooking a double batch of that recipe could feed them for a week.
7. Delegate
“Many hands make light work” is a popular idiom for a reason. Involving your kids in meal prep and cooking not only speeds up the process but also teaches them skills that will allow them to cook for themselves one day. Though different ages will have different abilities, even little kids can help stir and measure. If you have a partner, definitely talk to them about meal prepping with you, too.
8. Change What Doesn’t Work
Always be mindful of what worked and didn’t work. Were you overwhelmed by the amount you had to do to cook that night? Consider cooking a bulk of something to freeze over the weekend so all you have to do is heat it. Did you find that you didn’t have what you needed? Prioritize double-checking your grocery list next time, maybe using apps like Out of Milk to manage your grocery list. Did the cleanup take too long? Find recipes that only use one pot or one baking sheet to reduce the number of dishes used.
Like going back to school, getting into the groove of a new routine is tough. Sometimes, your plan won’t work out. Go easy on yourself when this happens. The best thing you can do is evaluate what went wrong, then try something different the next week.
Bethany Brewer is an Orlando-based creative writer and an editorial intern at Connecting Mothers Initiative. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Central Florida and uses it to write blogs, short stories and video game scripts.

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