How I Plan Our Weekly Dinners
A few weeks ago, I went back to work after a long maternity leave. During my leave, I put a lot of pressure on myself to “practice” routines so that by the time I returned, everything would feel seamless. Instead, it just stressed me out more. I constantly felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done—and that was without working. So naturally, I kept wondering: how am I ever going to manage this with a 9–5?
Before heading back, I decided to get more intentional about dinners—specifically how often we cook and how we use leftovers. Instead of defaulting to leftovers for lunches, we save them for another night. That one shift has made a huge difference. We’re cooking fewer nights overall, and it’s incredibly freeing to know that on certain evenings, you can just go home, hang out with the kids, and not think about dinner.
This is our rough weekly schedule:
Sunday: Cook dinner
Monday: Cook dinner (soup, slow cooker, etc.—I work from home this day and can keep an eye on things)
Tuesday: Sunday leftovers
Wednesday: Monday leftovers
Thursday: Cook dinner
Friday/Saturday: Go out, order takeout, or keep it simple with a solid protein, starch, and veggie
What’s been working so well about this setup is that most of the cooking happens earlier in the week, and we alternate meals so we’re not eating the same thing two nights in a row.
When I’m sourcing recipes, I usually start with my favorite cookbooks and reliable sites:
What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers
Cook This Book by Molly Baz
Dining In by Alison Roman
I also keep a running list of go-to meals and recipes we genuinely love. I started this repository recently and will keep adding to it over time—but you can see what’s in there so far HERE.
Less cooking, fewer last-minute DoorDash orders, and way less decision fatigue. This is what’s working for us right now.