Dear FlyLady,

In honor of meal planning, I would like to share what is working for my family because it might help someone else.

I have taken those thin little post-its, wrote the name of recipes we like or plan to try and placed them on the calendar. If it is a recipe from a cookbook, I write what page number it is on. Dinner recipes are on one color post-its. Any other special recipe will be written on another color, ie special breakfast, desert, drink, etc.

Do this the first time in small bits of time so you are not overwhelmed.

For my family, it is enough that I plan a dinner every other day because otherwise we end up with too much food. I use green for the dinner recipes so I make sure I have a green post-it every other day.

I have filled my calendar for the next 3 months by doing this. During the week of actually cooking and eating the meals, we are flexible on which meal we actually eat on each day depending on how much time we have to prepare.

After we eat the meal, we move the post-it to a free space on the calendar, sometime as much as 4 months later. But if I really liked the food, I may put it back on the calendar as early as in 2 more weeks.

If I didn’t love the recipe, the post-it goes in the trash.

I plan on also doing this the next time I make freezer recipes. I will have a post-it for each meal that is already made on my calendar. This way I make sure it doesn’t sit in my freezer too long and get freezer burn.

A FlyBaby

FlyLady here: No one in this family can say they don’t know what they are having for dinner!!

This is one of the reasons we make the FlyLady calendar with big squares. You have room for a Post-it note.