Putting dinner on the table night after night can feel like an exhausting challenge. If you’re the main meal planner for your family, you know how relentless it can sometimes feel. I often refer to this as the “mental load of dinner” – the constant need to figure out a plan for tonight’s dinner.
But here’s the good news: whether you’re new to meal planning or already enjoying the benefits of The Dinner Daily, dinner doesn’t have to be exhausting. It all comes down to having a plan. By spending a little time at the start of the week—or using all the tools available with The Dinner Daily—you’ll save time, save money, and start enjoying dinner again!
Here’s a story about my friend Amy. Amy is the main weekly meal planner in her family… Does this sound like you?
Amy comes home from work and is already tired after a long day and long commute. Time to figure out what to put on the table. The pressure is on! Her mind is blank. She thinks she has some chicken in the fridge, so she scrolls through her phone to quickly look for a recipe.
Amy’s search results come back and she starts reading. The first recipe looks interesting but too complicated. The second recipe will take too long. The third one looks really promising – but it calls for chicken stock and she doesn’t have any. The next one looks good but calls for cheese and her husband recently went dairy-free. This is taking too long! The clock is ticking and she has to start cooking soon. The next recipe looks good! Bingo, she’ll make that. But she needs some veggies, too. She knows she has some broccoli in the fridge but not much else – and she already made that the last two nights and the kids are going to say “broccoli again??” She didn’t plan well at the supermarket earlier this week.
She sighs. This is exhausting! Let’s just order pizza…again.
Here’s the good news for weekly meal planners:
Getting dinner on the table every night does not have to be an overwhelming challenge. Planning is the key. For every minute you spend planning you’ll save way more time down the road – trust us! (And there are even ways to make planning take almost no time!)
Whether you’re new to meal planning or already a member of The Dinner Daily, here’s a quick reminder of the many benefits a little planning can bring:
The benefits of meal planning
There are a host of benefits to planning your weeknight dinners:
Reduce stress
When you have a plan, the dreaded “what’s for dinner tonight?” is already answered. Meal planning takes the mental load off, allowing you to focus on getting dinner on the table. If you’re a member of The Dinner Daily, you already know how much time you save by not having to think about what to make. It’s all done in advance.
In fact, this is one of the top reasons our members come to us: they want to reduce the stress of figuring it out on a daily basis.
Bring back the family dinner
Meal planning makes it easier to put a home cooked meal on the table on a regular basis and that means you are far more likely to have a sit down family dinner. There are SO many reasons to make family dinners a priority, from health to your kids doing better in school. Read more about the benefits of family dinners.
Save time at dinnertime
With a plan, you don’t spend time figuring out what to do each night, you can get right to the cooking, so dinner is on the table more quickly. You can then be on to the next activity, whether it be taking kids to their activities, getting some work done around the house, or even relaxing and enjoying some downtime.
Now doesn’t that sound a whole lot better than flying through the grocery store an hour before dinner? Or frantically trying to get a meal on the table while everyone is cranky, hungry, and waiting?
Save time shopping
When you have a plan, you can create a comprehensive shopping list that will cover your needs for the whole week. Think of the time you can save if you can go shopping only once a week! You can save even more time if you have access to a grocery store with home delivery or curb side pick up. Then you can order your shopping list online and have it delivered or swoop through the parking lot and just pick it up.
Healthy meals
The benefits of cooking most of your meals at home are immense. When you have a plan for the week, you can create a menu that includes a wide variety of food types, plenty of vegetables, and different sources of protein. Planning for the full week also ensures that you’ve thought about sides and have enough for each meal. As a side note, our members tell us that having healthy sides planned for every dinner is a huge stress buster and helps them keep their veggie intake high.
A plan also helps you avoid the last-minute “let’s get takeout or fast food because I just can’t deal with it!”—which is good news for your health, as home-cooked meals are almost always healthier than those prepared outside the home. Even if you order what seems like a healthy meal, takeout or restaurant food often contains more salt, fat, and sugar than you would use at home. Read more about the benefits of home cooked meals here.
Save money by being organized
When you have a meal plan in advance, you can buy exactly what you need – no more and no less. That means you don’t end up with mushrooms that you bought in the supermarket thinking you might make beef stroganoff, but realized at home that you don’t have sour cream so can’t make it anyway. It also helps avoid impulse buys – you have a plan and a list and know exactly what you need and what you don’t need!
Save money by taking advantage of supermarket sales specials
This is the icing on the cake! When you are making a plan, you can build it around items that are on sale at your supermarket, and then in addition to the savings we already covered, you can save money by making sure that a large part of your grocery list is on sale.
We do this each and every week for our members and we know from our testing that this can lower your grocery bills by 20% to 25%! All those savings add up!
For our members reading this: Thank you for being part of The Dinner Daily family! We hope you’re enjoying the many benefits of meal planning. As always, we’re here to help if you ever have questions or need some extra support. You can reach us here
So if you are now convinced that embracing weekly meal planning is worth it, but just don’t have the time or desire to pull it altogether, we can help. Here are two ways we can help make dinner easier for you:
- If you are not a Dinner Daily member, give our award winning meal planning service a try for two weeks free. You can then experience all the benefits of not having to think about “what’s for dinner?”. CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED!
- Grab a copy of our Free Dinner Planning Guide that outlines 6 Ways to Save Time, Reduce Stress, and Save Money on Groceries.
