Meal planning can save you time. Lots of it. Who doesn’t want an extra hour or two a day?

I only realised how much time I could save when I started to do it. I had no idea what kind of power freedom planning my meals could give me. This is not mentioning the dragging, nagging feeling of not knowing what to cook. That made me feel so…ugh. I can’t begin to explain it.

Anyhow, let’s dive in to the 10 ways meal planning can save you time

1. The most obvious – thinking

You might think that whilst thinking (on and on) about what you’re going to cook does create a feeling of frustration, it does not waste time. Wrong. That persistent, lingering, drag-you-down thought runs through your head so many darn times a day you start to feel demotivated. And it starts to slow you down.
Having your meals planned out means that you do not have to rack your brains day in day out. No more decision fatigue. Just days on automatic, when all you need to do is glance at your calendar to see what’s on the menu.

2. With your grocery lists

For every day you decide about dinner on the fly, is more time wasted preparing yet another grocery list. It’s so much quicker to do this once a week instead of everyday or every other day! Did you know it takes the brain 25 minutes to re-focus when you’re switching tasks? Preparing one main shopping list a week will help you be more productive.
If you’re guilty of deciding what to cook last minute, and then head over to the store without a list, that’s a lot of time wasted going up and down the aisles while trying to put all of the ingredients together.

3. Unnecessary supermarket stops

Once you’ve decided what you’re going to be cooking, you’re most probably going to stop at a supermarket, or a grocery store, or a convenience shop. Sometimes you even need to stop at more than one outlet, because you cannot find all the things you need from one place. Add traffic, parking, and dragging along an unwilling child daily, and you’re doomed.

4. Quicker cooking

If you’re not racking your brains trying to think about what to cook, not staring into a half-empty refrigerator, frustrated; and not racing down the aisles with your child dragging their feet, the probability is you’ll have more energy and enthusiasm to get the cooking done.
Another bonus is that you can now pick and choose the time that suits you best to get your cooking done. I’d rather cook at the end of the day when my little one is in bed for the next day, or at least get the prep done. Who wants to be cooking with a child hanging on to their legs crying for attention?

5. Batch cooking

Once you’re meal planning, you can plan to batch cook too. Tripling a recipe will only take a little longer than cooking one single batch. Batching will in turn, save you more time as you will also cut down on the cleaning.
If you want to read more about batch cooking you can do so here and here, or you can watch this video.

PS: On Wednesday, I’m sharing my best meal planning tips to help you go from not-knowing-what-cook frustration, to hello-meal-planning-success. Tune in on the Mama Manual Facebook page to get the lowdown – it’s at 4:30pm Malta time (GMT +2).

PS: I dive into the full meal planning process in phase 2 of DIAF where I teach the game-changing way of planning your meals so you don’t just decide what to eat and when you eat it, but instead you’ll learn the proper way to meal plan so it becomes a walk in the park (hint: this will positively impact your cooking). If you’re interested in knowing more (especially what goes on in phase 1, and phases 2-7 😉) – click here!