An Experimentation in Organization

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That’s right. I’m talking about meal planning. I actually don’t mind meal planning that much. It’s my mom who hates it. And who I think of when I look at the picture above ;) But I have to admit, it’s not my favorite either. And I don’t know about you, but I find myself reusing the same 10 or so recipes all the time, even though there are other yummy things to make that I actually have recipes for…I just forget about them, I guess. So I was feeling the urge to be a little more organized and efficient with my meal planning…and hopefully that means I’ll be better about saving money when I go grocery shopping. That part remains to be seen ;)

Anyway, I found this on pinterest (man, I love pinterest) and so I modeled my calendar after hers. If you want specific details that I don’t include, it’s probably on that site. And her pictures are prettier. ;)

I started off by writing down all the meals that we eat. I was actually surprised at how many different things I could make! This made for a great start! I went through all my cookbooks (although considering my chosen profession, it’s hardly surprising that most of my cookbooks focus on dessert…not that John would complain if we had sweets every night instead of dinner…) and categorized them by type, such as red meat, chicken, pasta, salad, soup, etc. Once I had all that written out, I could get started.

I went to Joann’s and got a dry erase calendar. I forgot to take a picture of the front without anything on it…so this is from the internet ;)
I totally recommend getting dry erase and cork boards from Joann’s because you can use a 40% off coupon! Mine came out to be about only $12 with the coupon.

I hot glued some magnets onto the back so that I could hang it up on the fridge – so that it’s right there in the midst of dinner making.

I ended up needing quite a few magnets because it was a little heavier than I anticipated and when I had only 8 on there, it would fall every time we opened the freezer. And that was NOT going to work. So I added another 8 and it stays on the door quite nicely now.

Using my list of meals, I made magnetic labels of each meal that I can just stick onto the calendar. I made the labels in Word and then printed them off onto magnetic paper. I got pretty excited when I learned there was such a thing as magnetic paper. The stuff is awesome. I found mine at staples and it worked like a dream. If you want to check out my labels, I have them as PDFs HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. Heck, if you wanted you could print them off for yourself on magnetic paper! Although you might not need as many waffles labels as I do…we take waffles seriously around here…

I then had to cut them all out by hand…which took forever. My paper cutter decided to be stupid and refused to cut cleanly through anything and my replacement blade was DULL! what?! …I need a fiskars…but since I cut them out by hand, some of them look a little wonky because I apparently can’t cut a straight line to save my life. Thankfully, I cannot foresee an event in the near future that would require me to cut a straight line to save my life. Because I’d probably end up dying…

But I digress…

I also made monthly labels to put at the top of my calendar for each month, as well as little gray labels for side dishes, depending on what the side is. B for bread, S for salad, V for veggies, P for potatoes, and R for rice. They go underneath the meal label. The corkboard side is nice – I can hang up clipped coupons for when I go grocery shopping.

Here’s my color coding key. I also made some labels for when we go out to eat, or when we try a new recipe and Thursday is leftovers night. And of course, Waffles every Sunday ;) The dry erase board also came with these little markers with magnets attached, so that was perfect to hang one next to the calendar to write notes on which veggies I’ll be making and for rewriting out the calendar when the month changes.
Underneath I have 6 little clip magnets for Monday through Saturday (because waffles on Sundays are a given around here) with which I use to hang the recipe cards for the week on their corresponding days. Nifty, huh? I don’t know how well it will work…they might fall off the fridge as this part has not gone through rigorous door-opening testing yet. I’ll keep you posted. I also think it looks kinda hokey…opinions, anyone?

I love this because 1) I only have to plan meals once. a. month. YES! 2) I can see all my meal options when I pull out my magnetic labels and I’m not making the same exact things all the time and 3) I like to limit our meals to one red meat and one chicken meal per week (because meat is so dang expensive and hey, it’s healthier not to eat so much meat) and it’s easier to keep track of it this way.

I have pretty high hopes for this new system! What do you think?