New Meal Planner – Free Download

I guess September is meal planning month in my home? I posted this last September, and here it is, September, and I’ve made a new planning sheet.

I’ve recently jumped on the Beach Body bandwagon. I’m loving it so far, but it need far more meal prep than I have been doing lately. Not an excessive amount, but I had totally fallen into this cycle:

1. “Oh shit! It’s [whatever time]! What’s for dinner?”
2. “I don’ know! What do you want?”
3. “I don’t know! What do we have?”
4. *rummages in freezer* “We have this meat, but it needs to de defrosted. Oh! Fish! We have fish! I love fish!”
5. “But I don’t want fish.” (this is usually said in a whiny voice by people younger than me)
6. *throws hands up in air* “Fine! We’ll order [whatever] and I’ll take [whatever] out to defrost for tomorrow.”
7. By the way, tomorrow we don’t want to eat [whatever]

Ad infinitum.

But where there is a plan, there is structure. There is inflexibility (other than the flexibility built into the plan to swap days around). There is a known answer to “what’s for dinner?”. I love this. And as long as I use the system, the system works for me.

Do you meal plan? Do you mean to meal plan and just sort of… don’t? Do you meal plan, and find yourself with nothing to cook anyway because you didn’t defrost that [roast/turkey/chicken] or forgot to pick up that [broccoli/carrots/shallots/weirdly specific ingredient no one ever has just laying around]? Welcome to a lot of our lives! [read more – post from 9/2015]

I’ve stopped keeping a meal-planner specific book in my bag, but I do like to jot down what we’re eating in my bujo. I like even more to insert a meal page so everything is in one place.

Enter the printable half sheet planner.

I like shiny new things, so I made a shiny new planner page.

Need a printable paper planner? I have three four options to download, for free!, right here. If you need printing instructions, you can find them here.