Meal planning is very beneficial. It saves time and money, reduces wasted food, decreases stress, and helps you to eat healthier, thought-out meals. Below are the ways to create a meal-plan calendar, plus some additional sites we found that show how others have perfected their meal-planning methods.
- Create a Recipe Collection. The initial stage of meal planning requires research. This is where you choose which meals you will be willing to prepare and eat. Scour your recipe books, Pinterest boards and favorite websites to compile your collection. Start out with recipes that are realistic to you: use simple recipes if you don’t like to spend time in the kitchen.
- Consolidate, Format, and Categorize. Take all of these recipes and put them in one place. It’s recommended that you put each into the same format. Formatting them may initially be time-consuming, but it will help make your meal planning smoother if all the information (e.g. prep time, ingredients, instructions) can easily be found in the same places on each card or page. Lastly, categorize the recipes—we recommend by protein, but choose what makes sense to you. Examples of food categories: steak, seafood, pork, chicken, vegetarian, or perhaps Mexican, Chinese, Italian etc. When labeling, assign a color to each group. Consider compiling categories for things like sides or desserts as well.
- Make a Reusable Calendar. The longer you plan ahead, the more money and trips to the grocery store you can save. However, keep in mind that you can only plan for as much food as you can stock up on; if you can buy a month’s worth of food and keep it from spoiling, then plan for a month. If you have lots of fresh produce-based recipes, you may want to plan for 1-2 weeks at a time. Find either a physical or digital calendar that can be your visual meal plan board. Make sure that it is reusable. A magnetic dry-erase calendar board works well for many people. Next, consider how you’re going to correspond your recipes to your board. Remember the colors assigned to your recipe types? Match your colors on the board to the categories you’ve chosen. Some board material ideas: colored magnets, printable magnets, and symbols. Consider extra notes other than just main meals. For example, you may want to add “sides,” “desserts,” “leftovers,” or “occasions” as extra labels to your board.
- Fill the Calendar. This is the fun part! Fill your calendar with meals and mix up them up to keep things interesting. The color-coded labels should help to make the calendar readable. Again, don’t forget to add in events, and possible days for leftovers. Extra Tip: take inventory of your current ingredients and peruse grocery store newsletters for sales and specials to save extra money.
- Create the Ultimate Shopping List. Once you’ve put your meal plan together on the board, pull all the associated recipes and create your shopping list. This will make your grocery-shopping trips much more purposeful; just don’t forget to bring it with you!
- Try it out! Lastly, of course, try it out. Buy the groceries and start following the plan. As you practice your meal-planning, you may develop ways to keep your plan a little flexible or decide to organize in a way that is ideal for you. Every family is different, so make changes as you see fit. Good luck and happy planning!
Check out these awesome meal plan calendars:

The Homes I Have Made‘s menu board with symbols: click here.

RobbGurl’s Creations’ very color-coded meal plan calendar: click here.