Using a Clipboard for Meal Planning

It will come as no surprise that a grocery budget for a family of six (and one Great Dane) can easily become, without careful restraint and planning, the largest discretionary spending in one's household budget. Thus I've again resolved to find and follow a system for planning meals. In the past, I have tried a number of ways to manage this area of our lives, all of them quite unsuccessfully. Until now.

I recently came across the idea of "clipboarding" as a home organizational method and applied the idea to my meal planning—which, from beginning to end, I'm notoriously bad at doing. The clipboard holds a month’s supply of weekly calendars with spaces to outline the two meals I plan for: lunch—because that's when we eat our main meal of the day—and dinner. (I do not plan for snacks or breakfast, although I know some people who do. Let's not push it here.)

The first part of my success is the planning sheet itself. The first column on the left is the date, the second the meal (lunch or dinner), and the third the dishes I plan to prepare. I provide a fourth column for each day’s activities because they will affect the type of meal I'm able to assemble. I make note of any times we may be eating out or having company. The final long column on the right is a running list of items I'll need to buy for those meals. I got this cool little clippy thingy at MOPS last year which is attached to the clipboard and holds my pen. (I get really fussy when the pen disappears.) Underneath these planning sheets is a series of post its where I plan to eventually record my grocery budget and track the expenses (one step at a time, ok?).

Now, here's the second part that makes this work for me: I take this clipboard to the grocery store where I mark off the items, reference my planned meals (and will eventually record the amount I spent on the post its in the back). When I come home, I hang the clipboard back onto the hook on the fridge to refer to throughout the week, add items to the next week’s list as I think of them, or use ingredients in my pantry.

I also have a few supporting habits that strengthen the system:

1. My morning routine contains the simple question, What’s for dinner? This prompts me to check the menu, get out frozen foods to thaw, and make a mental note of what time I’ll need to start preparations in order to be eating at the expected time.
2. I keep a running list of favorite family meals that I can consult if I get stuck in the planning stages.
3. If we don’t prepare a meal I write it in on a day the following week.
4. Stapled to each week's planning sheet is a master grocery shopping list. This list is a custom list of items we typically stock and use (everything from apples to toothpaste) and some blank areas to write in items. The items are categorized (produce, dairy, etc.), and then listed in the order they appear in the grocery store (produce and bakery first . . . frozen foods last, etc.). Prior to shopping, I transfer the items from the weekly plan onto this list. It then can be easily divided, so Steve can take half and I can take the other half and we cut our shopping time in two. This list can then be thrown away without disrupting the system.