Weekly meal schedule

In a family time is usually short and I keep trying to find ways to optimize our time.

One effective trick was to plan our meals on sunday and use an online supermarket to shop for a whole week.

But I needed to do it more efficiently than just writing it on a piece of paper.

I found an old bulletin board and cleared it of old notes and found some gift ribbon. I divided the board into says and left room on one side for shopping lists etc. I simply used thumbtags for the ribbon. The original plan was to replace it with something more permanent if we decided to use the planner for a long time. We have now used it for over six months ...

The problem that presented next was to come up with meals. I quickly abanded the notion of trying new recipes or being the super mom that has 30 different dishes a month and made a list of what we like as a family to eat.

I used word to make little boxes where I wrote dishes. Beside the usual dishes like Lasagna and meatloaf  I also made one for leftovers and a number of blancs where we write dishes that hasn't a little sign with a whiteboard marker. I printed them and laminated them.

I even made a cardboard box to store the extra cards in.

Each sunday we sit down and plan the week armed with both the board, a shopping list and the supermarket ads.

It frees up time during the week and we actually eat a lot more different things because it is easier to come up with interesting meals sunday afternoon than in the supermarket 30 minutes before dinner.