10. Divide our meals into seasons!

There are tricks to make 1100 meals manageable! I know you have heard of how to eat a elephant right? NOT in one big bite, that's for sure! So we break it up!

• Assign each of these meals to a season, using the brainstorming form.
• If you really love something, repeat it for more than one season. Remember, each meal in each season will be made every 6 weeks if you make 6 menus.
• We are looking for 36 meals in each season, so stop when you get there, but don't worry if you don't have that many. We are only planning ONE WEEK AT A TIME.

Here on my website we have MANY recipes that can get you started, and I'm putting more in all the time. BUT my real suggestion is to gather all your beloved family favorites and just use new ones as fillers. Assign them to a season you think they would best go in and go from there. If that recipe would go great in spring AND summer, keep it in both. We are looking for 30 recipes for each season, so recipes you love, like spaghetti and tacos in each, is perfectly fine!



Once you have brainstormed all your family loved favorites and assigned them to a season, STOP! Stop because it is tempting to fill out your 36 meals for each and every season. Going on the hunt for yummy sounding recipes, getting lost in pinterest, getting distracted by all those amazing pictures. Before you know it your planning a remodel of a bedroom. Yep, been there, done that .... multiple times in fact :o)

6. Start Small!! One week at a time.

I divide my year into 3 seasons, Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter. This helps me to:

• Rotate my menus in groups. Soups and oven recipes for fall/winter, Cool summer salads with "not turning my oven on at all in the summer" recipes. Why pay to cool oven heat right?
• I do this to challenge my kids ;) I want them to try new things, the same Chicken nuggets, Mac & Cheese, spaghetti, hamburgers and tacos or whatever kid food they love, is not super healthy and does not challenge them. I want them to learn that they LOVE TO TRY NEW THINGS because they might find something they really like. I want them to eat healthy. Eventually they do love things they once hated, simply because they were exposed to it often, but sometimes not.
• To add variety. There are SO many yummy foods out there to loose track of, so this way they have there place, never forgotten. I also do this to add new variety and give ourselves a break from beloved recipes, so they stay loved.

So three seasons? How do I make this work? Put your math hat on and I will tell you. So we have THREE seasons that are FOUR months long each; spring, summer, fall/winter. That is 18 weeks each season. If we divide that into SIX, we will have six different week long menus. Our goal in each season is to have 6 week long menus. We then will repeat EACH menu FOUR times.  If we do this we don't have to plan for 18 weeks each season, we just keep repeating the same 6 menus 4 times. This allows us to have variety AND save time by reusing our time spent planning. Each time we make a menu and reuse it we are winning back time, each time we don't need to make a new shopping list for a menu we are getting payed in TIME! So...convinced?

Can you think of it now... with the time you spend planning now, you will have menus that save you time forever! The possibilities are amazing

Here is the math abbreviated for both a 3 and 4 month long season. You can do 4 seasons for sure, I just do 3 because we have a horribly long hot summer here in Texas.
3 seasons/year: 18 weeks per season, 6 menus per season, each menu made 4 times. Days planned for is 378, having 12 extra  planned days.
4 seasons/year: 12 weeks per season, 3 menus per season, each menu made 4 times. Days planned for is 336, missing 28 planned days.
Each has its benefits. Choose what works best for your family.