5 Tips to Make Family Meal Planning Easier

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When it comes to raising a family, one of the hardest jobs is trying to come up with solutions for dinner every night—let alone trying to find the time to cook!

Because of our super busy lives, serving our families homecooked meals may seem impossible, but I’m going to share 5 tips about meal planning that will be well worth your time and effort..

Benefits of Having Family Meals Together

Depending on your family’s lifestyle and schedule, the benefits of investing the initial time and effort into meal planning will vary, but overall the number one goal is to help simplify what should be an enjoyable and special part of every day—sharing a meal together.

Once in a routine of planning meals, you will be able to:

• Save money on your grocery bill each week.
• Save money (and boost your health) by not eating last-minute prepackaged or fast foods.
• Eat a wider variety of healthy meals because you’ll be in the habit of planning and checking out new recipes and controlling the ingredients.
• Get your kids involved in the process of cooking family meals.
• Save time and gas by not making extra trips to the store on the fly for dinner.

Additionally, when families share daily meals together:

• Children and teens are less likely to develop addictive habits such as drugs, alcohol, or smoking.
• Children feel heard and important and therefore have a greater sense of self-confidence and are less likely to give into negative peer pressure.
• Children do better academically because dinnertime is a great opportunity to teach communication skills.  Lots of chatter at the dinner table and adult conversation gives kids an edge with their verbal communication skills.
• Children learn proper table manners. Waiting until everyone is served, no chewing with your mouth open, elbows off the table, etc. are all important manners to learn at a young age. 
• Parents are able to save their precious sanity by spending more quality time with their loved ones, and less wasted time figuring out dinner.