Do You Menu?

When I was raising kids and homeschooling I found it so much easier to get everybody fed if I did a bit of preplanning. One of my homeschool friends with a very large family showed me her method and it's worked for me ever since.  We've gone from feeding 7, to 6, to 3 and now 2 and I still find this helpful. I like to keep fairly spontaneous so my dinner menu is always subject to change!!

First I print out the current month calendar. Then I add all the activities/plans/trips. If I'm not going to be home, then that is one less day I have to plan for. For me, I block out all Monday's because I work every Monday evening. This month I knew we'd be gone Saturday night and Sunday because of the marathon. I add any school activities that I will be attending. This month it's my nieces volleyball games. If it's a home game I can plan on using my crockpot or having leftovers. If it's out of town, hubby gets to have leftovers or fend for himself. After all that I only need to come up with 23 dinner ideas.
Here's how I fill in the rest:

Sunday- soup/beans/chili/etc
Monday- Italian
Tuesday-Mexican
Wednesday- Pork/chicken
Thursday- Casseroles
Friday- Beef
Saturday- cook's choice

Even if I needed to fill in the whole calender I'd only need 4 or 5 recipes for each day of the week. I can see the whole month at a glance and know that I don't want to have tortellini soup one day and spaghetti the next.  When I fix a pot roast I generally plan on french dip the following day or two. I can spread the recipes out however I want.

I shop once a week and can easily look at my weekly menu to see what I need. If something is on sale I can always move around my plans. I really like doing it for the whole month because of these reasons.

Because I have all my favorite recipes in a 3 ring binder it's easy for me to find what I'm looking for.

I hope I didn't make this sound complicated, because it is really very easy!!

Tell me how you're doing? Are you meeting your weekly goals?
My activity has been awesome and now that my menu is planned I can see improvements in my diet too. Seeing my kids and the thousands of others running in the marathon has inspired me- not to run a marathon, but just to stay on track and live a healthier life!!!