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The Benefits of Meal Planning with Theme Nights

Several years ago, when I was in a meal-planning rut, I decided to give each night of the week a theme (like Taco Tuesday) to see if it would save time on meal planning. It worked…and it stuck! I have been shocked by the amount of time I have been able to shave from the meal planning process by assigning a theme to each night of the week.  

Having an outline of what type of meal goes on which night of the week can jump-start the meal planning process; it narrows your focus so you don’t get overwhelmed sifting through your recipe collection. Want to give it a try? I have some theme night ideas for you.

Meal Plan Theme Night Ideas

Below are the current theme nights that we use at our house, plus a few other ideas for each night of the week. (The possibilities really are endless, especially if you don’t insist on alliteration like I do.  I’m weird like that…)

MONDAY

Our family starts the week with Meatless Monday.  There are a lot of reasons why people love Meatless Monday.  Our main motivator is to trim our grocery budget.  Here are some other alternatives to Meatless Monday:

• Meaty Monday (steak, chicken breasts, pork chops, etc.)

• Made-From-Scratch Monday (you know the meals – the ones that use every dish in the kitchen…)

• Make-It-Up Monday (take a detour from the recipe cards. This would really scare my family!)

• Meatball Monday (yes, I have so many uses for meatballs that I could devote one night a week to them…)

• Macaroni Monday (this could be a pasta or oven-baked casserole night)

• Marinara Monday (any dish that uses sauce!)

• Muffin Tin Monday (muffin tins aren’t just for breakfast!)

TUESDAY

There would be mutiny around here if we didn’t have Taco Tuesday.  This has turned out to be pretty much any meal in the taco realm (enchiladas, taco soup, etc.).  Other options for a Tuesday theme night that we will incorporate when we get tired of Taco Tuesday probably never are:

• “Try It” Tuesday (try a new recipe)

•  Take-Out Tuesday (either order from a favorite restaurant, or whip up your favorite copycat recipe)

• Traeger Tuesday (we are currently using our Traeger on Thursdays…more on that below)

• Turkey Tuesday

• Tourist Tuesday (cook a meal inspired by past, upcoming, or bucket list travel)

• TikTok Tuesday (get those social media recipes out of your saves and onto your dinner table!)

• Tomato Tuesday (this theme works for any tomato-based recipes, but this could also be a placeholder for any ingredient that’s overtaking your garden during the growing season)

WEDNESDAY

If you ever visit us on hump day, you can look forward to One Pot Wednesday.  I have also decided to include Crockpot meals in my meal planning for this theme, even if they might not end up being true “one pot” recipes.  Other ideas for Wednesday include:

• Wacky Wednesday (clean out the fridge/leftover night)

•  “What’s New” Wednesday (try a new recipe)

•  Wrap Wednesday (put your favorite salad in a tortilla and call it a night)

•  World Cuisine Wednesday 

• Wake Up Wednesday (breakfast for dinner)

• Waffle Wednesday (play a little bit of “Will it Waffle?” with your family)

• Wishlist Wednesday (rotate through your family members’ dinner wishlists)

THURSDAY

In our time zone, we have Traeger Thursday.  Yes, we have devoted one night a week, 52 weeks a year, to our wonderful Traeger wood pellet smoker.  When our propane grill became an unpredictable flamethrower, Mr. Blue Eyes really wanted to replace it with a smoker.  I was skeptical, but have been pleasantly surprised by how much I love it.

In my world of naming theme nights, Tuesday and Thursday theme night ideas are pretty much interchangeable. So you can read those ideas above, but here are a few Thursday-specific ideas:

• Thrifty Thursday (plan a meal based around what’s on sale)

• Thaw-It Thursday (use at least one ingredient from the freezer)

• Thirsty Thursday (choose your main course based on the beverage you’ll be drinking with it)

FRIDAY

We end the work week with Favorites Friday at our house.  This catch-all title helped me incorporate some of our favorite recipes that didn’t really fit into any of the other theme nights.  If we eat out, it is usually on Friday nights, so “Favorites Friday” can also include our favorite restaurants.  Other ideas for Friday include:

• Fire Up the Grill Friday

•  Fish Friday

• Fancy Friday (try those pretty recipes you find on Pinterest)

• Freezer Meal Friday (use a homemade or store-bought freezer meal)

• Finger Food Friday (charcuterie board, wings, potato skins, etc.)

• Flip-Flop Friday (kids plan and/or cook)

• Flapjack Friday (breakfast for dinner)

• Flatbread Friday (gyros, flatbread pizzas, meals that go with naan, etc.)

• French Fry Friday (any meal that would pair well with french fries/tots/roasted potatoes)

• Fend For Yourself Friday (there are nights when Mr. Blue Eyes and I are so busy that we each whip up our own quick dinner of choice and make enough to share with the kids)

SATURDAY/SUNDAY

Weekends call for simplicity around here. We have Soup Saturday which is perfect for our busy weekends.  I normally do a bit of grocery shopping on Saturdays, so I am rarely in the mood to cook a big dinner afterwards.  Here are some other ideas for Saturdays/Sundays.

• Sausage Saturday/Sunday

• Salad Saturday/Sunday

• Sandwich Saturday/Sunday

• Save It Saturday/Sunday (use up dribs and drabs of ingredients/leftovers so they don’t go to waste)

• Seafood Saturday/Sunday

• Storage Saturday/Sunday (try some creative recipes to help rotate your food storage items)

• Stir Fry Saturday/Sunday

• Slow Cooker Saturday/Sunday (break out the Crockpot!)

• Spaghetti Saturday/Sunday (pasta night is always a weekend favorite)

• Speedy Saturday/Sunday (use the Instant Pot or some of your other no-prep dinner ideas)

• Spud Saturday/Sunday (potatoes could either be the star or the side dish)

• Sunday Supper (pot roast, etc.)

• Celebration Saturday/Sunday (End your week with a celebration! Celebrate whatever food holiday falls on that day. Check out my free printable cheat sheet of food holidays for inspiration!)

As I mentioned earlier, the possibilities really are endless.  I hope that this has given you some ideas for your own dinner theme nights!

Deciding on Your Meal Plan Theme Nights

When you are brainstorming your own ideas, the main thing to keep in mind is whether you have enough recipes to warrant an entire night’s theme on that idea.  

At our house, Meatball Monday is a totally legitimate possibility, while it might not be for others who don’t have as many “go-to” meatball recipes.  On the other hand, casseroles are not a favorite for our family, so we wouldn’t devote one night a week to them.  The few casseroles that we do enjoy are included in our catch-all “Favorites Friday” theme.

You could even create a monthly meal planning calendar template that rotates through different themes each week or every other week. This will add some variety while still providing you with a starting point for meal planning.

Once you have your meal plan figured out, save even more time by posting it for the whole family to see.

How does THAT save time?

I’ve found that there is less “What’s for dinner?” questioning and negotiating with a posted menu. This saves time AND sanity!

Save These Dinner Theme Night Ideas

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite meal planning board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these dinner theme night ideas whenever you get suck in a meal planning rut!

The post Meal Plan with Theme Nights: Over 50 Ideas! appeared first on Mommy Standard Time.

Meal planning takes time.  Do you know what else takes time?  Answering the “What’s for dinner?” question several times per day and then fielding the MULTIPLE objections.  So I choose to meal plan AND post the plan.  Just like using clothing cubbies lessens the negotiations when it’s time to get dressed, having the weekly dinners posted for everyone to see has definitely helped with dinner-time complaints as well.

This saves time AND sanity!

My menu board of choice is a repurposed window that a relative painted with chalkboard paint and auctioned off at a family reunion. I love it, but my oh-so-sad labels for the days of the week bummed me OUT!

You might think that Teacher + Chalkboard = Success.  Not so much.  If you need me to demonstrate correct letter formation with a cute song to go along with it, I’m your gal.  But getting those artsy little fonts onto a chalkboard?  I just don’t have those skills (as you can clearly see…)

I checked around and saw a few tutorials with fancy chalk pens and what not.  I’m sure you’ve seen them (and if not, you can find them on Pinterest).  I didn’t want to go to that extent, but I gleaned a few tips and gave it a try.  This post really isn’t meant to be a detailed how-to, but rather a testimonial…

I can actually do it, so YOU can, too!

The basic process is:

1. Decide on a font (this is the most time consuming part) and type your text in a Word document.
2. Print off your text in the size you need and trim down the paper to make it easier to deal with.
3. Rub chalk on the BACK of the paper.
4. Carefully tape the paper to the chalkboard, with the font facing you and the chalk side down.
5. Trace your text with a ball point pen, then remove the paper  This will leave a light chalk imprint of your text on the chalkboard.
6. Trace over the faint lines with chalk to thicken it up (I use regular chalk instead of chalk pens so that I can change it up easily when I get bored with a font).
7. Clean up any chalk dust with your finger or Q-tip, if needed.

The best part of this whole project?  If you have your text printed off and prepped, you can easily dress up your chalkboard during nap time.

Do you use chalkboards as a time saver at your house?  To-do lists?  Menu boards?  Do you have any other tips or ideas for me now that I’ve caught the chalkboard fever?  Leave me a comment below!

The post How to Dress Up a Chalkboard (When You Have Very Little Artistic Skill) appeared first on Mommy Standard Time.

If your morning routine comes to a screeching halt when it is time for the kids to get dressed, then this post is for YOU, my friend. I’m going to share a child clothing organization hack that will revolutionize your morning!

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Do you regularly deal with any of these problems at your house?

• Running out of laundry before the end of the school week.
• Getting pulled away from various morning duties to rifle through laundry baskets.
• Forgetting to send the kids to school in the right clothes for PE day, a field trip, etc.
• Having to use “creative” pairings because coordinated pieces were used in different outfits.
• Sports uniform pieces getting discovered thirty minutes before game time…and they’re FILTHY!
• Disagreements about what an overly-opinionated child “WILL NOT WEAR” to school

Well, it’s your lucky day! I’m about to show you one simple little trick to child clothing organization that will solve ALL of the problems above.

May I introduce you to…”the cubbies.”

Mini-Me and The Professor each have a hanging sweater organizer that we call “cubbies” (this is the sweater organizer that is in Mini-Me’s closet). It started out simple enough, but I have been amazed at how much time we have shaved off our morning routine by using this simple little contraption.  Here’s a rundown of how a simple sweater organizer solves so may problems at our house (and can do the same at YOURS):

RUNNING OUT OF LAUNDRY

This is the reason that I started using cubbies in the first place.  When I was working full time as a teacher, I could rarely even think about laundry during the week.  Inevitably the kids would run out of underwear or pants before the week was over and either Mr. Blue Eyes or I would stay up late running a load of laundry to make sure that the kids had what they needed for the following day.

This is where the cubbies come in handy.  

The weekly outfits go into a cubby, one for each day. If we are able to fill the cubbies, then the kids have enough laundry for the week and I don’t have to think about kid laundry again until the following weekend.  

After a busy week at work, I always had a crazy long to-do list to take care of over the weekend. I had to decide where laundry ranked in order of priority, so I started putting full outfits in cubbies to make sure that the kids had enough clothes (including socks and underwear) to last them the following week.  

If they did, washing and folding laundry was pushed lower on my priority list.  If there weren’t enough clothes, I could easily see in the cubbies what items I needed to make sure I washed (a load of jeans, whites, etc.).

RIFLING THROUGH BASKETS

Sometimes laundry just doesn’t get folded, and that’s okay (if you’re overwhelmed by mountains of clean laundry, you should check out this post).  However, this can make mornings more hectic when all of the clean clothes are sitting in hampers around the house.

When I started using the cubbies, I felt less guilt about leaving some clothes in hampers because I knew the kids had what they needed to make it through the week. I knew I wouldn’t be digging through those hampers again until I was ready to fold the clothes.

Before the cubbies, I was spending a lot of our limited time in the morning digging through laundry baskets of clean clothes and silently chastising myself for not getting the laundry folded.

WEATHER & ACTIVITIES

On Saturdays, the kids and I decide on outfits that they want to wear the following week.  We consult the forecast and the school calendar to make sure that we take weather and other activities into consideration.

MISSING OUTFIT PIECES

In my pre-cubby life, it was a fairly common occurrence to be left with the leggings from one outfit and the top from another outfit because their coordinating pieces were already used.  

Needless to say, we ended up with some creative combinations.  

Now the outfit pieces are safe in their cubbies and can’t get hijacked for another outfit.  I even include shoes, if there are specific shoes for that outfit, and hair clips.

SPORTS UNIFORMS

I like to use a six-shelf organizer, with a space for each school day and one left over.  I use the top shelf for any uniforms,  leotards, or special outfits that will be used during the week.  It is nice to have all of the pieces in one place. This saves so much time when it’s time to get ready for after-school activities.

OVERLY-OPINIONATED CHILDREN

I saved the best for last.

Mini-Me went through a phase when certain jeans in her drawer were not skinny enough.  No matter how many times I showed her that the label said “Skinny Jeans”, the dear child would refuse to wear certain pants because they didn’t cut off enough blood circulation.

Enter the cubbies.

An important note:  Using cubbies doesn’t magically make an overly-opinionated kiddo suddenly not care about his/her clothing. This method just front-loads all of the clothing negotiations to the day the cubbies are filled. This saves precious time on hectic mornings!

During Mini-Me’s skinny jean phase, we had all of our clothing negotiations on Saturday when we filled the cubbies.    Mini-Me could see that she was going to wear her favorite pants on some days, and then we would (eventually) compromise on the other pants for the other days.  

She could choose which days she wanted to wear which pants.  

She could choose which shirts and socks she wanted to wear with them.

 The decisions were made and the cubbies were filled.

Then the morning of the unfavorable pants would come.  

<<dun, dun, DUN!>>

There would be an occasional protest, but having the outfits in the cubbies significantly lessened the negotiation attempts.  She can’t argue with a hanging sweater organizer!  (Remember? The cubbies make me hands-off in the clothing department on busy mornings. I wasn’t anywhere nearby to hear the objections when she was taking her outfit from the cubbies. It actually seemed to give her time to remember, on her own, that she really DID decide on that outfit for that particular day.)

It really is a beautiful thing.

I know there are some people reading this who might be concerned about my children’s sense of style and self-expression being stifled in this process of pre-determined wardrobe choices.  

Not to worry – I have a solution to that as well!  

I want to help my kids  look their best for school, while being dressed appropriately for the day’s weather and activities, and this method is the easiest way for me to accomplish that.   

But notice that the cubbies are only for school days – the kids can pick whatever they want out of their drawers to wear on the weekends.  And believe me, the creativity ABOUNDS!

Now you’ve seen how I take the stress out of getting dressed in our house. If you decide to do the same, I know it will help you curb some of the clothing drama during your busy morning routine.

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