Why I Stopped Making a Menu Plan

I used to make a menu plan, two weeks at a time to coincide with my grocery days.  But I stopped. 

I know, I know, everyone says to make a menu - it saves you time, it saves you money.

Well, it can but it can also waste a lot of time, for me anyway.

I would spend way too much time going through recipes, deciding what looked good and where it would fit in my week and then make my grocery list based on my menu. 

But do you know what happened, things would come up and we wouldn't follow the menu. Or a certain day and meal would come up and I just really wasn't in the mood for that particular meal that day. It eneded up being a waste of my time. 

So, I found a system that works much better for me.

I made a big list of meals, broken down by meal type and included sides, snack and desserts and posted it on my fridge in a page protector.

The highlighted squares mean that I have the ingredients to make that dish. I just use a dry erase marker so I can easily mark and then erase my marks. 

I can easily look at my list, see what I can make and what sounds good or what I have time for. I usually look at it the day before, night before or in the morning - whenever I happen to think about it. 

I know this system wouldn't work for everyone, but it saves me so much time not sitting down and planning a menu every couple weeks. 

My lists are just a compilation of meals/foods we enjoy and I usually have the ingredients on hand. If there is something specific I want to make that I know I'll need different ingredients for, I just add those ingredients to my grocery list and get them next time I go to the store. 

You can see that I have also made some notes as to where the recipe is, whether it is a pin or in the book, etc. (If it is one I'm not familiar with)

Maybe this system would work for you too if you struggle making a menu or sticking to your menu.

Blessings,

Rashel