What’s for dinner? It’s an age-old question that often leads to fighting, whining, indecision and eventually a trip to the closest fast-food restaurant for a meal you didn’t really want. You leave with “fast-food guilt” and a little lighter in the wallet.

Why is it SO HARD to come up with a meal every night?!? Oh, maybe it’s because it’s impossible to please everyone. Not to mention, life is so busy you rarely have time to make a decent meal, and then sit down together to eat it.

Inevitably, the person responsible for making dinner, usually me in our home, ends up frustrated and upset. By the time we think of something to have, it’s later than we want to be eating or we end up not having all the ingredients.

Can anyone relate to this?? Of course, you can, unless you have a personal chef in your home. That would be the BEST gift ever! Never hurts to dream, right?

But alas, no personal chef is walking through my front door anytime soon. So here’s what we do to make answering the question: “what’s for dinner” a lot easier. Years ago, I started using a dinner menu. In the beginning, I would plan our menu for an entire month. Crazy! Right? I know, but that’s what I did.

Now, I only plan a week at a time. For us, with all the different schedules, it’s just easier to take it one week at a time.

The first thing you need to do is make a list of all the meals you and your family will eat. In our house, we have picky eaters so our menu is not very diverse. If you’re lucky enough to have people who will try anything then your options are so much greater.

In any case, you base the meal off the main course, whatever that might be. For us, it comes down to which type of meat we’ll be having. We try to break things up throughout the week so we don’t repeat the same main course two days in a row.

For example, if we have homemade chicken noodle soup on Monday, we try not to have another chicken meal again until Wednesday.

For us, we have to base a lot of our menu on the week’s activities and where we’ll all be at dinner time. We try to eat together between 5-5:30, but that doesn’t always happen.

Based on all that information, I start to put the menu together for the week. Click here for a simple menu calendar. You can also add your list of meals at the bottom of your calendar, which makes it easier for planning.

Here is a list of some of our dinners and how I break them into categories.

Beef

Ground Beef Tacos
Shredded Beef Tacos
Beef Haystacks
Stew
Beef Stir Fry (or homemade Mongolian Grill)

Chicken

Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken Tacos
Chicken and Potatoes
BBQ Chicken
Chicken Haystacks
Chicken Stir-Fry (or homemade Mongolian Grill)
Taco Soup

Other

Pork Chops (BBQ or Crockpot)Homemade Pizza
Homemade Pizza
BBQ something
Fish

Looking at this picture you can see how my week comes together. I laminate it so I can keep reusing the same one.

The other thing I look at is what else goes with those meals. I try not to put Chicken and Potatoes and Stew together because, obviously, they both have potatoes. I do the same with dinners that have rice, or pasta.

It seems like a very simple thing, but this menu-planning hack saves us from wasting so much time every night trying to decide what to have for dinner. It also helps me plan my weekly grocery list, and we save a lot of money by not eating out because we couldn’t make a decision. Click here to see my grocery list.

So if you’re tired of never having an answer to what is often one of the most frustrating questions ever, then give this dinner menu calendar a try. You’ll be glad you did!

Got a favorite dish that’s great for families on the go? Share it with us in the comments section below.