If you eat food, have your own kitchen, and want easier mealtimes, this article is for you! Use these mealtime hacks to make life less stressful and more scrumptious.
My family personally uses most of the hacks recommended below. I’m also sharing hacks from trusted friends and family.
You can live intentionally with passion and purpose as God’s beloved.
I hope these hacks inspire you to be more intentional with how you’re spending your time and energy!
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Let’s dig in!
Note: this hack is also on the post for 14 Easy Mealtime Hacks for Parents of Toddlers.
When I was a kid, my mom had me pick out my clothes the night before. Typically, doing this helped mornings go more smoothly.
The same concept applies to meals. By taking some time to plan your meals in advance, you can reduce:
Not sure how to start meal planning? Check out my post, How to Make Meal Planning and a Food Inventory that Actually Works.
(Note: If you don’t want to print off a food plan every week and/or don’t have beautiful handwriting, this approach is for you!)
When we meal plan for the week(s), we like to keep these factors in mind:
If your family loves spaghetti, add it to the monthly rotation. If you’re a soup-y crew, do that. You get the gist.
This doesn’t have to be super complicated. (Woohoo!)
Note: this hack is also on the post for 14 Easy Mealtime Hacks for Parents of Toddlers.
Now doesn’t that sound fancy? Like a fairy princess party for a five-year-old?
But, no, we’re going far more simple than that. Basically, you give yourself a framework for what you’ll eat on certain days.
You could do it based on the type of dish, such as:
Or you could base it on how you’ll prepare your food, like:
Really, it doesn’t matter how you decide to do themed nights.
What’s most important is that it serves you and your household.
And if it doesn’t? Pivot. Try a different approach.
I also apply this concept to breakfasts and lunches. Here’s what we do for breakfast:
While it could look really boring, it’s actually really liberating. Let’s take Mondays and Tuesdays: Egg + Muffin. I actually have a lot of variety within this. We could have:
Honestly, this is a great option for people without toddlers, too. Just pick a combination that you would be okay with eating frequently and plug it in!
Sometimes you just don’t want to eat the food you’d planned for that day. Frozen soup just. doesn’t. sound. good.
When this happens, you’ve got two options:
Ideally, this option involves shopping your own pantry and refrigerator. Keep your budget in mind!
So, perhaps brainstorm your easy wins using ingredients you tend to have on hand!
Some options you might like include:
I haven’t tried this yet, but have heard from friends and podcasters about how it’s worked for them. My friend, Megan, shared this tip:
Once a month we started we will do one of those mail food services( like Hello Fresh). This will give us three dinners that we don’t have to plan. I find that this gives a break in the normal dinner recipe rut without really breaking the bank. It’s added new and easy recipes for us to recreate later as well.
Megan
My husband, our resident entree cook, makes a big dish or two most weekends.
Basically, he’s a cooking superstar. Swoon.
Afterward, we portion it out into meal-friendly portions and freeze it. I do the same when Little Man and I make muffins, waffles, etc.
Those delicious freezer dishes then serve us for the following weeks (or months!) to make meals easy and satisfying.
Note: We wouldn’t be able to freeze as much as we do without our deep freezer. My in-laws graciously gave us our deep freezer when our son came home from the NICU. #gamechanger
I’ve been surprised by how little space this freezer takes up. We use this freezer, but in white:
For instance, if you eat sandwiches throughout the week (the hubs does), I have two standing days each week when I prep his sandwiches for part of the week: Sundays and Wednesdays.
Preparing multiple sandwiches at a time is far more efficient and effective than prepping one sandwich every night.
Rather than scrambling for lunch every day, his meals are prepped and ready to rock. And I’m not making sandwiches as often!
With the previous hack in mind, build in a time each day to review what you’re going to eat the next day and make it easy to grab.
For instance, every night we take 30 seconds (give or take) to check our meal planning calendar for the next day. Then we set out the food for the next day.
If we’re eating homemade frozen chicken soup, that goes in the refrigerator. If Little Man and I are eating muffins and eggs, I pop a bag of muffins in the fridge.
It takes soo little time, but it’s so helpful for the next day.
And heck – the food’s starting to defrost when we’re snoozing (or while our son is loudly shouting his latest phrases) #win
Worried that your meals will get boring? Give yourself any of the challenges below to keep it fresh:
You can find SOO many tools to use a food inventory. So far, what I’ve seen seems. to fall into two approaches:
My go-to approach is using a whiteboard for quick updates and a Google doc for more detailed tracking.
Before you freak out (ack! more work!), it can seriously be helpful – especially if you meal plan.
For our meal planning, especially our freezer meal nights, we just filter for the entrees and it makes it much easier to keep it up to date.
If you actually keep it up-to-date, it can also help you with ordering groceries because you know what you actually have. With that in mind, it can help you be more effective with your budget and not overspend. Yay!
… especially if you plan on freezing it. Think about Future You or whoever else is digging in your freezer. Will they be able to identify what it is?
Or will it become mystery meat that then gets tossed?
Ahem… someone in my household is guilty of this…
(Dating your dishes can help, too, so you know if you need to eat it soon or let it go…)
I hope these mealtime hacks have given you some easy, doable ideas to make mealtimes less stressful! As a quick recap, here are the hacks we’ve discussed:
You are God’s beloved. Your life matters. Live intentionally.
I hope these hacks inspire you to be more intentional with how you’re spending your time and energy!
Which hacks are you going to try? Do you have another hack to share? Let’s talk in the comments!
P.S. Want some crazy simple steps to start living intentionally? Grab the Embrace Your Potential Playbook. It’ll help you zoom in on your God-gifted personality and give you practical tips to be more intentional, passionate, and purposeful as God’s beloved so you can become the best version of yourself.
I’m Cortney, a recovering over-achiever and God’s beloved who loves helping fellow Christian women like you embrace your God-given gifts so you have the confidence to live authentically.
I’m also a full-time mama to two sweet little boys, wife to my best friend, motivational speaker, and part-time Christian life coach. Chai lattes, strong coffee, podcasts, yoga, dance, and fairy tales nourish my soul and add sweetness to life.
Discovering the joy of embracing my God-given gifts and who He created me to be was a game-changer—a journey that brought freedom, unexpected delights, and relief from guilt. Finally, I felt free to be myself and ditch the pressure of being someone I wasn’t.
Incorporating those gifts into my day—from weekly planning to deciding on commitments, nurturing my marriage, and parenting—transformed everything. Now, I can’t imagine life without the perspective of fully embracing who God created me to be. I was missing so much without it!
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