Our household recently picked up an interesting habit, one where people tell me they couldn’t do it, or they just don’t work that way.
Every weekend, we sit down and plan our dinner meals for the entire week.
That’s it, that’s the whole habit. Seems straight-forward, doesn’t it? It’s so incredibly dull, even very German.
Five weekdays, two weekend days. Sit down, thumb through cookbooks, find some recipes to cook, make a shopping list, and off you go.
As a family, we mostly cook meals for dinner rather than for lunch, and I found that one of us usually goes shop for groceries every day, trying to figure out what to make for dinner, spending some extra money for things we probably don’t need along the way.
It feels a bit chaotic, but more than that, it causes stress and tends to make us spend more money every day when we go shopping. Little snack, little drink there, it adds up.
So we commit to the week upfront. It takes a bit of work to sit down and find nice recipes to cook, but that time is paid off by only having to go shopping once a week, twice if we do weekends and weekdays separately.
It’s an amazing little habit change, and it does require a commitment to what you’ve planned to cook, but it reduces the stress levels throughout the entire following week.
Yet it seems so hard to commit to something like this, why is that?
Maybe we feel uncomfortable planning that far ahead, maybe the effort of even finding something to cook is throwing us off?
If you have a family and kids to feed, I’d suggest you try this out. Not just shopping for food once a week, but planning dinner meals for every single day in advance.
It gives an amazing peace of mind in return for a little focused time investment.
Beyond daily routines, even having specific routines can be very beneficial for your overall productivity. You could start by trying to plan your dinner meals for the entire week.