Let’s talk about one of the biggest mental loads of motherhood—figuring out what’s for dinner. Every. Single. Night.

I started weekly meal planning over a year ago, and that was a huge help for reducing the decision fatigue and making my grocery shopping more efficient. 

But doing that every Sunday still felt like a lot of work. Every. Single. Week.

So I decided to try monthly meal planning for January, and it has been a game changer. It honestly takes about the same amount of time to plan a month as it did for a week.

Poppy is all about making mom's lives easier (& more stylish) so I'm sharing my super simple template and process here for you to try it. 

Here's how it works: 

✅ Start a Google Sheet for dinner plans, or start with my template to make it even easier. 

 I like to have it in Google Sheets so I can access from my phone and so my husband can access it as well. 

✅ Fill in your family's favorite meals.

When I first started meal planning, I really only had about 8 go-to meals that we loved. I started making a point a couple of years ago to try new things from Pinterest ant NYT Cooking a couple of times per week. Some of them were 'meh', some were total flops, and lots of those have made it to our favorite meals list. Now we have almost 30! 

✅ Fill in your family's key events for the month on the calendar tab of the spreadsheet.

I don't put all of our calendar details in here–just the things relevant to dinner. For example, an afternoon soccer practice so I know I want to have a slow cooker meal going that morning. Or a 'Date Night' so we make it an easy kid-favorite dinner. 

✅ Spread out your favorite meals across the month depending on the needs of the day.

Mix in some new recipes to try, and don't be afraid of being a 'meal repeater'. I also schedule in days for eating out or eating leftovers, although my husband and I work from home so leftovers typically become lunches for us. 

That's it! Now meal planning for the month is done, and you don't have to think about 'what's for dinner' for another month. It truly gets easier each month you do this because you can just copy most of the previous month and make some tweaks.