Free Weekly Meal Planner Printable with Grocery List
Use this free weekly planner to make meal time easy. With plenty of room for your planned meals, grocery list, and notes, this one printable has it all!
Meal planning..it’s one of those things that we hear about all the time. But in my opinion, it’s one of those things that we should talk about all the time! Maybe that’s just because I’ve seen the benefits over and over again in my own life.
Any time I don’t meal plan, I can almost guarantee that my grocery bill will be way higher and I’m probably going to end up wanting to grab takeout a couple nights a week. But when I have my entire week of meals planned out with the shopping list? I no longer have to rush to think of meals, our food costs go down, and we tend to make healthier choices.
So, I’ve made this free weekly meal planning template that you can print out and use over and over again.
Happy meal planning, friends!
Minimalist Meal Planning Page
This weekly meal plan template was created with a minimalist design so that anyone can use it.
On the left-hand side, you’ll find enough space to write down your meals for all the days of the week. Personally, I prefer a blank space like this because it means you can include what you need to for your lifestyle!
On the other side, you’ll find ample space for notes. This section can be used in a variety of ways. Make your grocery shopping list, a to-do list for meal prepping, or use it write down where to find those new dinner recipes you’re wanting to try out!
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Benefits of Meal Planning
Sitting down weekly (or monthly) to plan out your meals is such a good idea. Here’s a few of the practical benefits of using a weekly meal planning system.
- Budgeting – If you are trying to stick to a grocery budget (and who isn’t these days?!), weekly meal planning is an excellent way to help. If you know exactly what you need to pull together your family meals, you’ll no longer buy things you think you need. You can also choose to overlap ingredients between meals, which often times cuts down on your grocery bill (and food waste).
- Decision Fatigue – I think we can all agree that decision fatigue is so real, especially when it comes to deciding what to cook! As a busy mom, I can so appreciate not having to come up with meal ideas on the spot. Sitting down once, planning everything out, and then moving on, frees up head space for all of the other decisions that have to be made daily.
- Healthy Lifestyle – I know that coming up with healthy meals that the entire family will eat can seem daunting. But meal planning is a simple way to work in some of those healthier choices or swaps.
- Meal Prepping – If you’ve wanted to jump into meal prepping at some level having a plan is the first step!
How to Make Meal Planning Easy
Here are a few tricks I use to keep menu planning simple and not overwhelming. I feel like keeping things simple around my house equals consistency. Overcomplicating something means that I’ll do it for a little while, but after a few weeks I’m back where I started.
- Planning Day – Pick one day of the week (Sunday evening for me) to plan out your daily meals. Ideally, you want to be able to sit down and get the entire thing knocked out at once.
- Themed Nights – We’ve all heard of Taco Tuesdays – but what about assigning a theme to every night of the week? It doesn’t have to be as catchy as Taco Tuesday, but it is still a great way to cut down on decision fatigue. Some simple “themes” I use frequently are pizza/pasta night, sandwich night, baked potato night, etc. These are simple meals that all of my family members enjoy. And I can change out the toppings for some variety!
- Loop Scheduling Menus – Have you heard of loop scheduling? It’s where you have a list of specific things you want to get through, and you continually loop through them. You can apply this to meal planning, too! I utilize this approach for planning breakfasts and lunches. I’ll come up with a 2-3 breakfast and lunch ideas per week, and then just loop back through them!
- Stick to Tried & True – I love trying new recipes. But, I’ve found that they have a special place in meal planning. That’s because I not only have to reference the recipe, but also know what ingredients I need to have. This adds to my weekly planning time, so I try to keep new recipes to only one or two a week.
- Leftover Night – If your family doesn’t mind leftovers, assign one night a week to utilizing them for an easy dinner! I always assign leftover night to a day of the week that’s particularly busy.
