When I do meal planning, which does help a lot, I write the menu on my master calendar. That calendar controls everything that is happening in my household. It is my bible for daily living.

I also have certain days with certain themes. For instance, we always have pizza on Saturday night. Sunday is always Oriental food. Monday = American (hamburgers, BBQ, etc). That makes the meal planning so much easier.

__________________
"Poor people work for their money. Rich people make their money work for them."

When my kids were small I printed out 6 weeks of menus complete with the shopping lists for each week. I never had the same meal twice in that 6 week span. The menu plan and shopping lists cut down the time I spent trying to decide what to eat, figure out if we had it, do I need to go buy it and shopping time. Knowing what I was going to need weeks in advance also saved me money. I was able to buy the items when they were on sale and use more coupons before they expired. Having a large freezer and pantry or cupboard space is helpful. I never got complaints about what's for dinner because we decided as a family what to put on the menus. Our schedule was pretty hectic soedays, other days lax so I made sure I planned meals accordingly. There were somedays the meals were switched around, it was never an issue because the ingredients were always there.

I wish I could assign a theme to a day of the week, but DH is only home for dinner on monday and tuesdays so he'd get bored with that really quick!

__________________
:love:

I am trying my best to plan meals because I feel like it will help cut some of my expenses. We will not be as quick to eat out if I have things planned. Probably will not assign a certain meal to a certain night but I will have a master list of what I can fix. I have really used the Food and recipe section here on Mommysavers!!! I read what others are having for dinner each day and sometimes that will inspire me.