Dinners are a mess!  Everyday I’m coming up with a dinner plan and it feels so disorganized.

What should I do?

This used to be me – winging the meal plan every single day.  What should we have for dinner?  There might be some disagreeing or arguing, and then finally a quick dash to the store to pick up a few things.  Often dinner would be late or sometimes even non-existent. 

And then everything changed.  I started planning out my meals. 

I picked up a small whiteboard and hung it up in the kitchen. 

Each weekend, we plan out our meals for Sunday through Thursday, and post these on the whiteboard.  Then we do our grocery shopping knowing what the meals will be and are able to be prepared to make the planned meals. 

We decided to leave Friday as an eat out/order in day, so no meal gets planned for that day. And Saturday is more of a free day. 

We also have a small section at the bottom of the whiteboard for requests – craving a meal?  Add it to this section.  Even if you want to remember a meal for the upcoming weeks. 

This works really well no matter what your living situation is – it works well if you live alone, with your partner, with young children, or with adult children or really in any living arrangement at all. 

It’s best to include all of those that are in the household in the planning.  You’ll find that people start to really love knowing what’s coming up for dinner that week.  There is less chaos at dinner time, and less arguing about the menu in the moment and fewer last-minute trips to the store. 

If you then throw in a relatively set dinner time and some dinner conversation, voila!  You have the makings of some great dinner memories.