I don’t think I’m alone in considering meal planning to be a necessary evil. For a long time the process just seemed so overwhelming that I just didn’t do it. I chose to fly by the seat of my pants instead.

The trade off was needing to answer the question, “What should I pack the kids for lunch tomorrow?” Every single night. It was exhausting. And if I lost track of time and found myself needing something from the store after 10 pm I had to drive into town to the 24 hour Walmart to get it.

I knew there had to be a better way. In this post I am going to tell you all about how I left chaos behind. I am going to introduce you to my School Meal Planner and teach you how to use it. At the end of this post last minute lunches will be a thing of the past.

Plan out the week

The first step to tackling any overwhelming job is to break down the task into bit size chunks. I broke my kids’ school meals into four categories.

• Main
• Side
• Fruit/Veggie
• Snack

Instead of having to generate an entire meal from scratch all I had to do was come up with one to two items for each category.

Start with snack

I start by working through my kids’ snacks for the week. Their school provides a morning snack. It is not always dye free so I typically have to provide 2-3 alternatives each week.

I like starting with snack because 1) it’s easy because most of the planning is already done for me and 2) I can’t change the snack menu. There is typically some overlap from snack and items I choose for sides I try to avoid overlapping on the same day for the sake of variety.

Pick a main

The main is the back bone of my kids’ lunch. I like to prioritize healthy fats and protein because fat and protein are really important for keeping you feeling full. Satiety is really important for a lot of reasons but most importantly you can’t learn if you’re hungry!

Pick a side

For us, sides are usually a starch and typically something that is leftover from snack. This week my kids’ school is serving fruit loops for snack. I am replacing the fruit loops with a dye free version from Trader Joe’s. I will work in this cereal on other days as a lunch side.

Fruits and Veggies

Really it’s usually a fruit or a veggie but the nutritional value is the same. I think this is the easiest category to pick out because it’s mostly done for me. We buy the fruit or veggie that looks the best and is the best price, which is typically whatever is in season. I pick out 2-3 things to rotate through out the week. Done.

Putting it all together

Whether your family is dye free or not having a weekly lunch plan is a life saver! Putting together meals on the fly is not fun. There is nothing worse than realizing you’re out of bread 10 minutes after the local grocery store closes.

I created my school meal planner to solve this problem. Instead of stressing over lunch every night I spend a few minutes on Sunday afternoons planning out my kids’ lunches for the week. It’s been revolutionary.

If you’re tired of the never ending game of “What am I sending for lunch?” Check out my School Meal Planner!