Weekly Meal Planner and Grocery List Binder

This is a weekly meal planner and grocery list binder designed for households that want to plan a week of meals, shop once and spend less.

Many households decide what is for dinner on the day, and go back to the shop several times a week to do it. Each trip takes time and adds things that were not on any list. Many printable meal planners are one page of empty boxes with no explanation. This binder gives you the pages and shows you how to use them. Each week has a meal plan and a grocery list that is already sorted by section of the shop, and every page is shown filled in before you are asked to fill in your own.

How it works

Once a week, about fifteen minutes.

1. Check what you have. Look in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboards. Write three things to use up first.
2. Pick your meals. Busy nights first, then the food to use up, then one dinner cooked double. Fill the gaps from your own list of meals you like.
3. Write the list. Go through the plan one meal at a time and write what you do not have under its section of the shop.
4. Shop once. Tick each line as you go and write the total at the bottom.

A one-page Start here tells you what to do first. The guide then takes each step in turn, in plain words.

What is inside (61 pages)

• How to plan a week (8 pages): the four steps, planning around a busy night, cooking once and eating twice, what usually freezes well and how to label it, using leftovers, and how to set a weekly food budget from your own past receipts.
• An example week (3 pages): one household's meal plan, the grocery list that came from it, and what the week cost, section by section. The numbers add up.
• Meals to choose from (6 pages): a "Meals we like" list to fill in once, with an example, and four example week menus as dish names: a budget week, a batch-cook week, a quick week and a meat-free week.
• Your 13 weeks (27 pages): a meal plan page and a grocery list page for every week. Print any week again when you run out.
• Kitchen records (14 pages): cupboard and fridge inventories, a freezer log with dates, a 13-week food budget tracker with a bar chart you shade, a price list for the things you always buy, recipe cards and a batch-cooking session planner. Each has a filled-in example.

What you download

• The binder in US Letter and A4, in full colour, for reading on screen.
• A fillable edition in both sizes, with a box to type in on every line and a box to click for every tick.
• A white-paper print edition in both sizes, light on ink, plus a spreadsheet (.xlsx, opens in Excel and Google Sheets) that adds up your food budget and grocery list for you, and the Start here page on its own, in one ZIP.

Good to know

• The weeks are not dated, so you can start on any day. No page has a currency sign, so it works with any money. Amounts in the guide are given in metric and US measures.
• The four example menus are dish names, as ideas. They are not recipes, and the binder has no recipes in it. The recipe cards are blank, for your own.
• The fillable edition is made for Adobe Acrobat Reader, Chrome and Edge. The PDF does not add anything up; the spreadsheet does. Typing does not work in GoodNotes or Notability; use the print edition there and write by hand.
• Print at 100% or "actual size", not "fit to page".

This binder is for planning meals and shopping. It is not diet, nutrition or health advice, and it makes no promise about what you will spend or save. For storing, freezing and reheating food, follow the storage guidance on the pack and your local food safety advice.