Toile Meal Planner

I recently decided I needed something to help me with my meal planning. I tend to put it off because, for me, the hardest part is just making decisions! It's mentally exhausting. On top of that, each time I sit down I have to recall what my choices are as far as meals go, and then remember all the ingredients needed, and then make a grocery list accordingly. It's mentally taxing to try to remember everything from scratch!

So, I decided first to take regular notecards, and write down all of my most common meals, along with the ingredients needed to make them.


These weren't recipe cards, I don't have instructions on them...just the name of the dish, and the ingredients. I bought an inexpensive plastic notecard box at an office store to store the cards in.

Then I bought some vinyl, cut it in strips, used binding tape on the edges and sewed it to some fabric to make clear pockets for the cards.


I made six rows of 4 pockets, and in the first slot I placed a card with the day of the week on it.


And finally, sewed a few loops of ribbon along the top for hanging.


Now, all I have to do when it's time to plan meals is to flip through my box of notecards, rather than trying to recall every meal I make, and place them in the slots for each day. So much quicker! This also allows me to see the ingredients needed at a glance, so I can use them to make my grocery list.

Since I made my meal planner I haven't put off planning the meals, it's much less taxing on my brain! And of course, I always love another excuse to hang some more pretty fabric somewhere. :-)