A Weekly Dinner Plan is a fantastic way to become more organized and stay on budget!
If you are new to making a Weekly Dinner Plan, be sure to do an inventory of your entire kitchen beforehand – fridge, freezer, deep freeze, cupboards and pantry – so you’re not buying things you already have and you can use up items in the back of your pantry you may have forgotten about!
A complete inventory of your entire kitchen is only needed when you are first starting out. This is done to help stay on budget. You can then plan your weekly meals around as many food items (fresh, frozen, canned) you already have on-hand.
Your grocery list should be made up of only what you need to make your meals the coming week. This cuts down on food waste and with a grocery list to stick to, helps to keep you from overspending.
Breakfast and lunches in our house are quite simple and routine, so I personally don’t use a meal plan for those. If you feel you need to add that in, then you’ll simply do a Weekly Meal Plan vs a Weekly Dinner Plan. Of course, if you are doing only the Weekly Dinner Plan, be sure your grocery list includes the items you need to make breakfasts and lunches for the week.
The starting day of your Dinner Plan needs to coincide with your weekly grocery shopping trip. In other words, if you do your grocery shopping on Saturday, then your week starts Sunday; shop on Wednesday and your week starts Thursday.
Fancy templates not needed! You can easily write a Weekly Dinner Plan on a piece of paper of a note pad.
Happy planning!
