Guess what? I did a thing! I decided to give meal planning another shot for the whole month of November 2020. Wanna know if I stuck with it for the first week? Did I have to do a mid-week grocery trip? Want a sneak peek inside my Mommy Planner? Don’t worry, I’ll give you the Mommy Scoop! Just keep reading.
I know that the end of the year has come, but I am just now figuring out this new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been figuring out ways to simplify life, homeschooling, chores, etc. and I realized that I needed to get back into planning out things. Between Google Calendar, iCal, and multiple paper planners, you would think that I would have everything scheduled and prepared all of the time. If only one could dream! So that’s why I decided to jumpstart November by using our monthly week off from homeschooling to plan ahead for November AND December. One of the things I did was create a Meal Plan, something I use to do all the time, along with Meal Prepping.
Here’s a look at my Meal Plan for the week of November 1st.
Once this plan was created, I did my grocery and household shopping. I only shopped at two stores and got enough ingredients and supplies to last the rest of the year. Even though I planned meals for the month of November, I ended up being able to have enough meals planned to last through December, if not into the New Year.
So now that the first week is done, how did I do? Well, honestly, I/we stuck to the plan — for the most part. Sometime towards the end of the week, I realized that I probably wouldn’t want to make two large cooked breakfasts in a row. So I changed Saturday’s breakfast so that we could choose from either yogurt parfaits or oatmeal. When Saturday came, I was so thankful to have made that change in the plan because surely enough, I did not feel like cooking anything early on Saturday morning! (Listen, it was a long week!)
Now, sometime early in the week, yes, I did have to do a mid-week grocery run. I had to do a curbside order at Sam’s Club for some tortilla chips for our Taco Tuesday Taco Dip. I also decided to get a couple of other pantry items that I knew I would need at some point before the year’s end. (And when I say a couple, I literally mean two items.) As much as I didn’t want to make extra trips to the store, chances are I’ll have to make another curbside order at Sam’s Club later this week for some other pantry items I didn’t realize we were out of.
When planning for this week’s meals, it was pretty simple at first, but then it got a little tricky. The easiest part was planning out breakfasts. As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” so that means I planned the same breakfast favorites for this week. Those are cereal, yogurt parfaits, and oatmeal. Once a week, I’ll cook a big breakfast on Sundays. Speaking of which, we ended up having quite a bit of leftovers from breakfast this morning, which will be perfect to breakfast tomorrow morning!
Actually, we ended up having a lot of leftovers last week. Because I forgot this wonderful reality when I started planning out meals for this week, I ended up getting all confused about what we should have, desperately wanting to pull meals from the bank that I created last week. Thank God for leftovers! Soon after plugging in all the leftovers into the Meal Plan, finishing things off was fairly simple — and that’s what I like, simplicity.
Here’s a look at this week’s Meal Plan, the week of November 9th. First is a look at my notes as I worked through it all and then afterward is the final list that I put up on the fridge.
Last but not least, here’s a sneak peek at my Mommy Planner!
This is my November monthly spread.
I attempted to also plan out the weekly chores. Here’s what I came up with:
- Sundays – Laundry Day 1 (the kids’ clothing and bedding)
- Mondays – Trash Day Prep
- Tuesdays – Trash Day, Shopping/Errands, Meal Prep (yes, all on the same day)
- Wednesdays – Bathrooms
- Thursdays – Laundry Day 2 (Hubby and I’s clothing and towels)
- Fridays – Floors and Disinfect Home
- Saturdays – Planning, Home Projects, and Clean Car
- Sundays – Planning
Okay, I’ll be super honest about this — I absolutely did not stick to this schedule at all. Not at all. But that’s okay because now I know what’s realistic and what’s not. Besides I like to leave room for plans to potentially change. One thing I learned this week is that grocery shopping and meal prepping probably won’t work for me, so I’m definitely going to change that in my plans.
I would love for you to see an even closer look at my Mommy Planner. Take a look at this YouTube video!
Do you Meal Plan? If so, how has it been working (or not working) for you? And if you don’t Meal Plan, is this something that you might be interested in? I’m excited to give Meal Planning another shot this November! I’ll continue to share my weekly plans here and invite you to join me as I plan things out in real-time on my YouTube channel. See you next week!
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