Sarahritchie17 If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I believe that meal planning is so important to bringing intention and balance to your eating, being less wasteful, and saving money.
You know I love cooking and saving money by eating in, but meal planning each week feels like a chore every Sunday. I know I don’t technically have to meal plan to cook good meals at home, but I really hate wasting food and making extra trips to the grocery store, so meal planning is a necessary evil to me.
I’d seen on Pinterest the idea of making a menu board. (I think that’s what it’s called at least.) A menu board is basically a visual display of the meals that you plan to make each day of the week.
I figured that if I could create a bulletin board with notecards, it would make the chore of meal planning each week more fun. Using notecards with recipes written on the back would make it easier to build my grocery list too.
So during quarantine, I set out to create such a board. Here’s how it turned out!
Without further ado, here are the steps I used to build my menu board:
Step 1: Gather your supplies
You’ll need:
- A bulletin board
- Push pins (not pictured)
- Notecards
- A papercutter (you can use scissors and a ruler if you don’t have a papercutter on hand)
- Assorted pens
- Recipe books or the Internet
Step 2: Figure out the dimensions
You can measure your bulletin board and do the math, or you can do what I did and lay notecards on the board until they don’t fit anymore and guesstimate how you need to cut them to fit. I like to just plan dinners (breakfasts and lunches I just improvise with what’s in the pantry and fridge). I wanted to have a column with the day of the week and a column with the recipe title. I just had to cut my notecards in half to fit 7 x 2 on the board I had.
Step 3: Write out the days of the week
Once you cut your notecards down to size, you’ll want to write out the days of the week. If you don’t like your handwriting, you can type and print them or use stamps or stickers. I’ve been trying to teach myself modern calligraphy, so I had fun handwriting these.
Step 4: Make the recipe cards
If you’re using lined notecards, on the blank side, write the title of the recipe. On the lined side, write out the recipe. If you don’t have enough space, you can just write the ingredient list and where you can go to find the full recipe.
Don’t forget to also make cards that say “leftovers,” “eat out,” and “order-in.”
Step 5: Organize your cards
I sorted my recipes by type or meat used. I normally cook with chicken or ground beef, so I made category cards for these as well as “other meats,” and “no meat.” Lastly I put all the non-cooking notecards together (AKA leftovers, eating out, etc.). These categories made it easy to incorporate variety and balance into my meal plans. To keep everything organized, I paperclipped each category and put them in an envelope. Do whatever works for you here to organize your recipe cards. We all have different methods of organization and different go-to recipes to sort through.
Step 6: Plan your first week!
Pin up the cards for your first week and then hang your board somewhere in your kitchen. When it’s time to make your grocery list for the week, take a look at the back side of the cards on your board, and jot down the ingredients you don’t already have on hand.
I hope you enjoyed this craft and that it helps you to be more intentional with your dinners! Let me know how it went by sharing a picture on Instagram and tagging @genuinesunshineblog.
If you like what you read here, follow @genuinesunshineblog on Instagram and look for new posts here at genuinesunshineblog.com every Sunday to start your week with sunshine!
Cheers!
Sarah
