How many people suffer from dinner stress? You’re at home or work and realize it’s only a few hours before dinner needs to be ready, and you have no idea what to do. Don’t let dinner add any more stress to your day. All you need to do is plan ahead, and dinner stress will be a thing of the past.

Develop a Meal Plan Calendar

Planning begins not with the meals, but the plan for the plan. You need to decide what days will be for sitting down and developing a meal plan for the week and a day for grocery shopping. This helps determine how the rest of the week will roll out. For example, let’s say Saturday is meal plan day. It’s the weekend, and you might have the time to get everything done.  Sunday would naturally be the grocery shopping day because you can go to the store and create a list based on the items you’ll need for the week.

You’ll need some way to keep track of your plan. You can have a journal or calendar that you can write the meals on. Ideally, you’ll use something magnetic that you can post on or near the refrigerator in the kitchen for easy reference.

Your meal planning day is also a perfect time to clean out the fridge and freezer to make room for the next day’s groceries.

Make Meal Prep as Easy as Possible

No one has time to create a massive meal every day from scratch. Just because you don’t have a lot of time, doesn’t mean you need to eat out or grab quick unhealthy meals. Crockpot meals and freezer meals are a great way to get healthy fresh meals without all the prep and hassle.

Crock pot meals are set and forget, and cook throughout the day. You put the ingredients in the pot and it’s done just in time for dinner. Crock pot meals are great for roasts, soups and many other items. You can find recipes for crock pot versions of just about everything.

Freezer meals require prep work, but can be frozen and cooked at your leisure. If you want to do freezer meals, then choose a day, likely during the weekend when you have more flexibility, to create several different meals, store them and freeze. During the week, you just need to pop it in the oven or stovetop and dinner is ready on time.

Give Yourself a Day

With meal prep, planning and all the usual crazy things that happen during the week, give yourself a day or two to relax. When you create your plan, make one day a leftover day and the next a day to eat out. The day you plan for the following week is a great time to eat out. Consider it a reward being awesome.

If you need any help with getting your house cleaned during your busy week, then contact us and we’ll give you even more time for what’s important.