Surprisingly Easy hack for your daily hassles.
I did a survey last month.
Which is the single-most daunting/exhausting household chore out of the following?
(a) Cleaning the mess your kids leave behind
(b) Cooking
(c) Deciding what to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner
(d) Doing the dishes/laundry
I thought it could be a tie between (a) and (c). But there was one winner.
*DRUMROLL*
Deciding what to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner.
It was not the physical work that mattered to most of them — like cooking or cleaning or doing the dishes — but the mental work involved in deciding meals that ALL of them found mentally tiring and draining.
And the reason for writing about it this week — comes from personal experience as well. I have been fortunate enough to have house help to cook meals while I am away at work.
There have been numerous times when I have been in the middle of a highly stressful work situation and I receive a call from my help — and you guessed it right — What should I cook for lunch, she asks! Oh, I don’t blame her.
But in the middle of the chaos, all I can think of is to ask her to cook what we had yesterday and cut the call and dive into the chaos again. And this repeats and repeats AND REPEATS.
Relatable?
Also, I realized that my toddler was disinterested in having her food and instead took a lot more interest in eating junk. This wasn’t so earlier.
Let me start with making meals more interesting first.
And the first step towards this — was to STOP last-minute meal planning.
And as I talked about it in my last post, deciding what to eat, and what not to — This continuous deciding mode we put our brains into — thrice a day leads to DECISION FATIGUE. It is stressful and draining and you will start hating this whole process of meal planning when in fact it is a fun thing to do!
SO, WHAT DID I DO ABOUT IT?
I made a MEAL PLANNING DIARY
I invest hardly 20 mins every Sunday — and plan the menu for the whole week. I take 2 pages every week. The first one is for my daughter’s school tiffin. And the second one is for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- Why a diary? Why not just stick a meal template on the fridge and reuse it every week?
Well, this diary has been a savior! Every time I feel I am falling short of ideas; I refer to the previous entries! Sometimes you may not get time to plan your meal. Behold. All you got to do is hop on to any random week and simply follow the same chart.
WHY DOES IT HELP?
- It helps you to get rid of Decision Fatigue — 3 meals X 7 days a week.
That’s 21 times you have to rack your brain to come up with something nice to eat- and that too at the busiest time of the day! Isn’t it easier to just plan it out for 20 mins and get done with it?
- Helps you plan your grocery for the week. You decide to make your favorite meal and realize that the groceries aren’t there- happens to most of us. Not anymore, I’d say.
- Come up with better and more interesting meals! I generally sit with my mom’s cookbook (yes I am old school) and of course google — while I plan the meals for the week.
I am getting better at cooking I must say!
So, all you got to do is
- Get a good diary for your meal plans that has enough pages to last 3–4 years! Imagine all your meal plans in one book — that is like a gold mine for busy moms!
- If you feel you want to try it out first before jumping right in — divide a section in your already existing journal and give it a try.
- Spend 20 mins ONCE in a week — choose a time when you are free, don’t have anything planned for the next half an hour, and ssshhhhh kids are asleep!
Happy Meal Planning :-D
Namaste!
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