Picking the recipes this way will help create a shopping list based on the common ingredients between your meals. It’s time to pick your recipes for the week! Go to Tab #2, “Shopping List (Build List Here),” and use the pivot tables to pick your recipes with the filter.
For example, I have three lines in the tab dedicated to avocado toast just to help myself plan. Don’t feel like everything needs to be a formal recipe. I recommend starting the spreadsheet with 35-50 recipes and keep adding as you go.
While not necessary, it can also be helpful to include the URL for the recipe as well as how many servings it creates. Copy and paste your recipe name for however many ingredients you have, and then fill in the ingredients and quantity for each on the corresponding lines. The first step is to create a running list of your favorite recipes in Tab #1, “Recipes (Add Recipes Here.)” The trick is that each ingredient needs to be listed individually for this to work. To get started, download my template here and either edit it in Excel or by re-uploading into Google Sheets (personally, I find pivot tables 100x easier in Google Sheets and highly recommend that option). You will find that a little investment up front makes your meal planning come together in a snap each week on average, it takes me about 10 minutes to write my shopping list. I played around with Google Sheets to create a meal planning system and I hope what I’ve created can be helpful to someone else. I’ve been known to use Google Sheets and pivot tables to plan everything – I may have created a wedding planning Google Sheet embarrassingly soon after getting engaged a few years ago. I knew ultimately that meal planning was such a silly thing to stress over, but I still felt it was important, so I sought out a solution to make it easier. However, when it comes to selecting recipes and planning the week, it always takes longer than it should. We understand that meal planning is a great idea – it can help you save money, make healthier food decisions and cuts down on food waste. In our real world, meal planning is a bit of a stressor. Whether you use this Meal Plan Template Google Sheets tool, the purpose-built Budgeat app, or some other method, giving meal planning a try is well worth the effort.In my ideal and super-Instagrammable world, my husband and I would spend Sundays poring over beautiful cookbooks and food blogs to plan our week in meals. Meal planning is one of the most effective ways to reduce food waste, save money on groceries, and eat more delicious, varied, and healthy food. Spreadsheets are great and have a tremendous variety of uses, but we at Budgeat firmly believe that a purpose built tool such as our meal planning app is simply much better suited for the job. Of course, while the Meal Plan Template Google Sheets tool will hopefully be helpful, it’s definitely far from the perfect tool for meal planning. It's sized so that it will fit well on a double sided single piece of standard paper (Legal / A4) if you'd like to print it out. Change the start date in cell C3 to update all of the following dates automatically.
The "Monthly" tab provides a compact monthly meal planning template. The meal plan view is frozen at the top of the screen so that you can reference your meal plan as you're translating it into a grocery list.Ĥ. It includes a weekly meal planning grid, grocery list template, and a section for notes. The "Standard" tab provides a slightly more involved template meant to be used primarily on your computer, phone, or other device. If you prefer using it on your computer or mobile device, set the zoom to about 60% on most devices to see the full template on one screen without needing to scroll.ģ. It's sized so that it will fit well on a single piece of standard paper (Legal / A4) if you'd like to print it out. The "Classic" tab provides a simple meal planning template. The "Overview" tab provides a basic overview of each of the subsequent tabs.Ģ. What’s in the Meal Plan Template Google Sheets file?ġ. Make a copy of the Meal Plan Template Google Sheets file to begin using it