Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks everyone, you've inspired me! We made a meal plan this weekend using some of your suggestions, went grocery shopping with a prepared list, prepped a stew last night and turned the crock pot on this morning. I think we're off to a good start. Now I'm hoping that if we can force ourselves to follow the plan this week, and keep it up for a few more weeks, it'll eventually become habit.

I found the first few weeks were hard. After that I cannot even fathom why everyone doesn't plan. Once you get used to it, it is less stressful than not planning.

One thing I often do is plan for leftovers.

DH and I share the planning and cooking of meals in our house. I have a big binder of recipes entitled "Weekday Meals" and each Sunday morning we sit and go through it to plan out the week's lunches (which I pack for the kids) and dinners, according to the family's schedule (crockpot meal on busy day, time-consuming but delicious one on Sunday, etc.). DH does the grocery-shopping on Sundays while the boys and I are at church.

Whenever I find a recipe that looks like a good weeknight dinner, I add it to the front of the binder and we try it. If we like it, it stays; if not, out it goes. Periodically I review the binder and purge meals that no one is crazy about, or which turned out to be time-consuming or otherwise problematic.

I always have a few "emergency" things on hand in case we run into some issue. Also, when possible I try to freeze extra helpings of things (e.g. meat sauce), or an extra meal's worth of something, e.g. I bought pork tenderloin last week (two long tenderloins in one package) and marinated both separately, one for dinner that night and one in a ziplock in the freezer. We'll pull it out one day for dinner and it will marinate as it thaws.