Nothing does more to control the chaos in a household than a good meal plan. Never again will you panic at 4:00pm that you have no idea what to make for dinner. Meat? Needs to be defrosted. Pasta? Maybe but you had that a couple of days ago. In the end you decide to boil some hot dogs and nuke some baked beans. Or worse, you order out for a pizza. And in the back of your mind you promise that you’ll make a healthy dinner tomorrow.

Or have you ever stared into your refrigerator confused about how to make a meal out of what you see? Is ketchup, bologna, and cantaloupe a meal? Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but I’m not exaggerating the good effect a meal plan can have on your family and sanity.

The best way to start a meal plan is by writing down 10-14 dinner recipes that your family enjoys. Avoid trying to blindly follow one of those pre-made dinner plans. You end up with recipes you’re not comfortable making and that your family doesn’t really like eating.

From those recipes you’re chosen, write up a month’s worth (30 days) of dinners, sides and dishes too. If you have 10 meals, your family will eat the same thing three times a month. If you have 14, they’ll only be repeating menus twice a month. Once you have a month of meals you can break it down into a week at a time (or however often you go shopping) to make it easier to write up your grocery list.

You’ll also find that by knowing ahead of time what you’ll be eating you’ll be able to buy bulk of some things ahead of time and you’ll know how much you need when something goes on sale.

By starting with a plan, you are in a better position to b-chaos your dinner times. Maybe you can make double portions and freeze the leftover so you can have nights off and a healthy home-cooked meal for your family. You could even prepare somethings ahead of time and make mealtimes easier that way. Before you know it, you won’t even remember what it was like to not have a plan for dinner.