Welcome to Day 1 of 31 Days to Becoming an Organized Mom.  In case you missed the details and the reason behind this series you can find them here.  Today I wanted to share with you how I am attempting to get organized with meal planning by using Pinterest. I feel that having a meal plan and sticking with it is one of the biggest keys to being organized.  When I have a meal plan in place it brings a whole new level of peace and order to my day.

There are about a million different ways to go about meal planning and I have attempted at least 500,000 of them.  Okay, well maybe not, but I have tried a LOT of them.  The problem they all seemed to have for me is that my (big) family didn’t care for all of the recipes or they didn’t leave much room for flexibility.  Also, if you happen to have anyone on a special diet or with an allergy a meal plan can be tricky.

Enter Pinterest.  I started pinning lots of amazing looking recipes on Pinterest but I would never get around to using them because of that darn meal plan or just not remembering them.  I use the internet a lot anyway for finding recipes and planning meals, so I thought why not make a Meal Plan Board?  Oh my goodness!  I get to make meals that I think my family will love every night, plus I get to try lots of new things and can anyone say crockpot?  There are about a bajillion crockpot recipes on Pinterest {and yes I did just make up a number}.  The crockpot is a busy moms best friend! Plus an amazing added bonus is that you can find recipes for just about any diet or allergy issue.  If you are eating Paleo, gluten or dairy free, or low carb, whatever it is, there are lots of recipes to be found for your family on Pinterest.

How does a Pinterest Meal Plan Work?

• First I created a board on Pinterest and called it “Meal Plan.” You can call yours whatever you like but distinguish this board from your other recipes.

• Next I added the recipes that I wanted to the board by either pinning them with the pin it button {see the pin it button below this post for an example} on a website or I repinned recipes from Pinterest itself {you can search for specific recipes or just see what your friends are pinning}.

• When I pinned the recipes to my Meal Plan Board I would type “Meal Plan Day 1” and so on before the title of the recipe in the description box.  Pinterest doesn’t allow you to order your pins but if you only have only up to 30 recipes on one board it’s not too difficult to find the right one for each day.  I created a 30 day board and if I want to do more I will add another 30 day board called “Meal Plan 2.”  You could also do it for only a week or two at a time or even 28 days {exactly 4 weeks} if that works better for you.
• Once I had my 30 days of recipes I made a shopping list for each week.  This takes a little bit of time but if you do it upfront then the weeks that follow will be less work.

• When I went shopping I got everything I would need for the week and tonight we are having Mongolian Beef.  I can tell you what we are having for dinner for the next 3o days and exactly what I need to get to make it!

A Few Notes:

• I made sure to think ahead to what my days are like in a month.  On days when we are busier I chose crockpot or make ahead recipes.
• You can be as specific as adding a date to the recipe of when you want to have it.
• This works for breakfast and lunch as well.  I made separate Breakfast and Lunch boards and am still working on completing them for the month.
• If you are thinking “but I cannot add my own recipes” this is true but there are ways around it.  Since I am a blogger I can add recipes that my family uses and loves to my blog and pin them onto my Meal Plan Boards {and I plan to do this}.  You could also search the internet for similar recipes to the ones you know and love {I bet you’ll find something close} and go ahead and pin it onto your board as a reminder that you are making that favorite dinner recipe that day and just make it your own way.

I know the system is not perfect but I think it will be a fun way to spice up the meal planning!

What do you think?  Will you give a Pinterest Meal Plan a try? Is there anything that you would do differently? Here’s my Meal Plan Board link of you’d like to take a look at it.

Speaking of Pinterest, perhaps you should pin this post {smile}?