I don’t know about y’all, but I feel like all I do is prep food for my toddler! While bottles and the washing and sterilizing that goes with it seemed never ending, it has nothing on the amount of times a day I hear “more” or see Sully coming back from the pantry with a random snack asking me to open it. We stick to a pretty regular food schedule, but with three meals and two to three snacks, it’s a lot. Add in our food allergy restrictions and a pandemic food shortage, and a lot of days feels like a combination of Groundhog’s Day and Chopped: meal time rolls around, stare in pantry at ingredients, wonder what to fix, create random assortment of a meal, eat, and repeat every single day.
Insert meal planner here! I got so tired of figuring out in real time what in our pantry Sully could and should eat for meals, so I made this sheet for our fridge to make our days a little easier. I don’t fill it out for the entire week because sometimes leftover plans change based on what and how much we eat for dinner or lunch, but I do have the next day’s written down. (We have a separate planner for Sully because of his food allergies; often, my husband and I will order delivery or pick up from a restaurant that isn’t safe for him and eat it after he’s gone to bed. That means we make him his own food for that meal.)
You can also laminate and use a dry erase marker to make it even simpler! The link below contains two versions of the printable: one singular “kid’s” planner and one plural “kids'” planner based on your family.