For 2018, I’m going to get my Excel mojo back.
My first project?
A printable meal planner!
This planner will help Moms like me who are barely surviving in the kitchen. It has always been a struggle for me to come up with a decision on what meal to prepare, every single day. I thought that if there is already a list of meals that I can just refer to, it would be easier to make a decision on what to prepare for the day.
Add to that the fact that I’m not a cook.
Oh, I can cook adobo, sinigang, tinola, spaghetti, and other similar stuff, but I’m not really that great. And I don’t have that many recipes in my arsenal, so I rely on just the usual stuff. And the occasional pa-chambs. 🙂
Here’s a clue… I don’t eat, much less cook, food I can’t pronounce.
And can I just mention that my kids LOVE my spaghetti?
But having so short a list of recipes makes it really hard to plan for a week. And that affects the grocery shopping, which we do once a week, sometimes even every other week.
For moms/homemakers like me, coming up with a decision on what’s for lunch or what’s for dinner sucks up a lot of time already. And add to that, the heartache when you finally decide on a meal and find out that you don’t have the necessary ingredients in your pantry.
This meal planner will save me the time and the heartache.
The first thing I did was make a list of all the meals I know how to prepare. Then I asked members of my WAHM community to contribute their own. I created four worksheets to represent breakfast, lunch and dinner, snacks, and desserts. And once I had a decent number of meals to cover a week without a repeat, I went ahead and used the wonderful functions of Excel to create my printable meal plan.
So here’s how to use this…
Those highlighted cells are clickable. When you click on the cell, a dropdown arrow will appear. When you click on the dropdown arrow, a list of meals will appear, and you just need to click on what suits your fancy for the time of day.
Look…
And I’m all for keeping it real. Please take note that there’s a No Cooking option. So there will days that we’ll just call for home delivery, or feast on leftovers, or eat out.
Once I have completed our meals for the week, I can print the file, and create the grocery list.
Once Week 1 has been printed, I can simply clear the cells and start all over for the next week.
I’m actually just channeling Mark Zuckerberg here. I’m thinking about how much time he saves just by NOT having to decide what to wear every single day. This printable meal planner? I betcha it will save me at the very least an hour per week. An hour that I can utilize to do something else. Like crochet.
So yeah, I was truly inspired.
But if you’re a busy VA like me, and say your rate is $25 per hour, this planner has a $100 value to you, per month.
Me, I’m just happy to have that one hour of crochet time. Or paper quilling time.
Want me to create something like this for you? You know how to reach me!
Do you, have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave a reply below, or post them on my Facebook Page.
Marge, also known as The Happy WAHM, is a virtual assistant who turned her passion for entrepreneurship into a worthy endeavor of offering complete business solutions to CEOs and business owners around the world. She turned her back on a thriving corporate career to become a hands-on mom and created a lifestyle that allowed her to build a homebased career, homeschool her children, and still have time to pursue her passion for arts and crafting.
She only posts her content on her website, TheHappyWAHM.com. If you see this content on someone else’s site then it is NOT by any means authorized.
