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Weekly meal planner

A landscape table with a row for each day and a column for each meal, plus an optional checkbox grocery list. It is for households that decide the week's food ahead of time and shop once.

By Paul Gunder. Free to print for home, classroom and office use; see how our printables are made.

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Weekly Meal Planner1 page · US Letter, landscape

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On this page

What prints

The page is landscape and headed Weekly Meal Planner with a Week of line. The main table has a Day column listing the seven weekdays, then one column for each meal. In the default setup the columns are Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks, and the dinner column is the widest. Each day has a tall empty cell for each meal.

Down the right side, taking about a quarter of the width, is a Grocery list with checkbox lines. Both the snacks column and the grocery list can be turned off.

If you choose dinner only, the columns change to Dinner, Side dishes and Prep ahead. The last one is the cell for things like thawing chicken or soaking beans the night before.

The settings

  • Heading. Type a title of your choice, 40 characters or fewer.
  • Planner. One week or one month. This page opens on one week.
  • Meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, or dinner only.
  • Snacks column. On or off. Shown only for one week with all three meals.
  • Grocery list beside it. On or off. Shown only for one week.
  • Week starts on. Sunday or Monday.

With the grocery list off, the table uses the whole page width, which gives you wider cells for longer meal descriptions.

Planning the week

Plan backward from what is already in the house. Look at the fridge and pantry first and write down meals that use what is there. Then fill the remaining slots, and write only the ingredients you lack on the grocery list. That is how a plan lowers waste, not just spending.

Put the busiest evening's dinner at the easy end: leftovers, a sheet-pan meal or a slow cooker. Use the Prep ahead column, if you chose dinner only, to move work to a calmer day.

If you want a guide to what a balanced plate looks like, USDA MyPlate has free resources. For safe handling when you shop, store and cook, FoodSafety.gov covers chilling times and storage.

Worked example: five school nights and a weekend

Start the week on Monday, with all meals, snacks on, grocery list on. Monday: oatmeal, turkey sandwich, tacos with black beans, apple slices. Tuesday: toast and eggs, leftover tacos in a wrap, pasta with jarred sauce and a bagged salad, yogurt. Wednesday: cereal, soup and crackers, baked chicken with rice and green beans, popcorn. Thursday is leftovers night for dinner. Friday is pizza. Saturday brunch replaces breakfast and lunch with pancakes and fruit.

On the grocery list: eggs, tortillas, black beans, pasta sauce, bagged salad, chicken thighs, green beans, yogurt, apples, pancake mix. Pantry rice and oatmeal do not need to be added.

After the week

Keep each finished page. When someone asks what to cook, flip back to the weeks that worked. For a longer view, there is a monthly meal planner, and the grocery list template is useful when your list needs more room than the side column.

Sources

  1. USDA MyPlate myplate.gov
  2. FoodSafety.gov foodsafety.gov