Meal Planning

We try to plan out our meals for the week before getting groceries. It helps save money and emergency trips to the grocery store. We order our groceries and pick them up (it's amazing - we just drive up to the pick-up door and they bring out all of the groceries nicely packed in bags) so it's nice to sit down and make our meal plan and order groceries at the same time.

In the past I would write down our general meal plan but we always strayed from it, forgot what we wanted to make (sometimes I lost the list), etc. I decided I wanted to put the meal plan on the refrigerator so it would be easier to follow. So far we've had it up for 1 1/2 weeks and have managed to follow the meal plan. :-)

I found this cute meal plan online that the you can download for free (or you can buy a different style in her etsy shop) and decided to use this.

I had a frame that I had purchased form a thrift store and painted black but never used. It is really lightweight and I can write on the glass with a dry erase marker so I decided that it would be perfect for this project.

I took off the flap on the back that makes it stand up.

I had a bunch of magnets laying around so I grabbed six and used epoxy to glue them to the back.

Then I put in the weekly meal plan template and was finished!

I thought it looked nice on the refrigerator and I think seeing the meal plan will really help us keep organized and know what we plan on making and this way we only buy what we need and have less food go bad. I only write dinners (sometimes lunches on the weekends) on the calendar since for lunch we bring either leftovers or other basics (bagels, sandwiches, etc.).

I'm hoping to make something similar so we can write down shopping lists, to do, and our weekly schedule. Hopefully I can fit that all into one frame...we'll see.