Meal Planning and Prepping the Lazy Genius Way

This is for you if you're tired of hearing "Mom, what's for dinner?", and then having to scramble because you have no idea what's for dinner, you have no desire to run to the store for ingredients, and you're at the point in the day that you'd rather feed your family a bowl of lint from the dryer than actually cook a meal.

If you’ve watched our videos before, welcome back! We appreciate you! If you’re new here welcome! I’m Tonya Johnson and I’m the founder of helping hearts ministries where we work with homeschool parents to put the fun back into homeschooling while focusing on keeping a biblical worldview.

Ok, so this menu planning/meal prepping system is gold! Let me tell y’all how I got here first. So I went from being someone who didn’t know how to cook anything, going to the store 3-4 times per week because I only planned like 1-2 dinners at a time, and wasting so much time and so much money because a lot of the time we’d just end up going out to eat. It’d be 2-3 in the afternoon before I thought about dinner and then it was just easier to run through a drive thru than go into a grocery store and come home and cook. Then we went to the opposite extreme and we went grocery shopping once per month and crammed our fridge and freezer so full that we’d legit lose things and find them months later in the back with frost on them. We meal prepped every week. Every week we’d spend Sunday afternoons doing nothing but cooking and portioning meals and honestly it sucked. Like it was fun the first couple of times, but then it got to wear I dreaded Sundays. We’d be in church all morning, then cooking all afternoon, then back to church for the evening service. The worst part was if we missed that window, then we’d just go crazy all week eating whatever we wanted and then have a ton of regret. It was just way too rigorous for us because that was the only window we had. If that works for you, go for it, I’m just saying it didn’t work for our schedule.

What did work was what I’m about to show you. There are 3 steps to this. 

I have a rotation of 50+ meals that I have on my computer, and I put them all together into a free download for you guys if you want to grab it here. You can print this off and then choose 14 meals that work for your family for the next two weeks. It does help if you loosely know your schedule for those two weeks. Make sure you check out the corresponding video to see this in action with our own meal planning.

Once you’re done writing in all of your meals simply cross them off your master list of meals. When you sit down to do this again in 2 weeks, you’ll choose from the meals left and then again for the 3rd round, You can always add meals to your list as you learn new meals, and this helps you not get into a rut where you’re eating the same things every week. We typically don’t repeat meals more than once every 4-5 weeks.

Every Sunday after our evening church service, we go to the Aldi down the street and get all of our ingredients for that week’s meals. I can get in and out in under 30 minutes, and we save enough money going to this specific store that it’s worth spending the extra 30 min each week vs getting all of our groceries delivered. We were doing this every other Sunday, but because I like to use a lot of produce, every two weeks wasn’t feasible. I currently have a Sam's plus membership because the amount of money I get back every year completely pays for my membership allowing me free grocery deliveries from them. I also use sam’s for my husband’s lunch snacks, certain meat, and toiletries/household products. In addition, have a walmart delivery service that I use for things I can’t get at Aldi, things that are brand specific, but things we don’t want to buy in bulk like shampoo and conditioner, coffee, and certain cleaning supplies. If I didn’t have a grocery delivery service I’d go to same and Walmart once per month.

Sample Schedule: no grocery delivery

Sunday night - weekly Aldi trip
First Monday of each month (choose any day of the week you like) monthly sam's and walmart trip

This portion I’m going to show you rather than just talk you through. Here’s a week’s worth of our meals and how I prep and cook them the lazy genius way.

Last thing I want to mention is the title I chose. Several years ago I found a book called the lazy genius way that helped me so much with keeping my house clean. I’ve linked it on my amazon book list. I chose to apply some of her tricks (working smarter not harder) to my meals and it was a total game changer! What I didn’t know is she actually has a book called the lazy genius kitchen, also linked in the amazon book list. As I’m writing this, I I haven’t read the book yet, but as you’re reading it I’ve probably finished it. I recommend both her books and her podcast if you’re looking to simplify your home management strategy.

That’s it! I hope this helps with your meal planning/prepping no matter what season you’re in. Prioritize what’s important to you. I’d love to hear your go to meal planning tips down in the comments.

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