In late 2019, I hosted a challenge called “Conquer Your Chaos” and the information I put out during that challenge has been something I grounded myself with during the COVID19 pandemic. 

Along with staying properly hydrated, starting a meditation practice, organizing your surroundings, and getting a handle on your schedule, the one thing I keep coming back to and sharing with my fellow queens is the idea of a capsule meal plan - The Capsule Menu.

Now, you may have heard of a ‘capsule wardrobe’. This is the same concept, but morphed into menu planning.

(I actually interview Missy Titus from Simplified Wardrobe on The Bumpcast Podcast about making a capsule wardrobe - Listen HERE)

Here are the steps you need in order to create your own Capsule Menu:

1. Pick 6-8 of your favorite dinner meals (you can do this with breakfast and lunch as well, but for now, we are only talking about dinner.

2. Get out your planner or use my free PDF to write out what meals you are having on which day. I’ve designed this as a two week program, but you could plan out your whole month this way, I just re-use the same two week schedule until we are completely sick of it.

3. Plug the different meals into your schedule for two weeks. We like to keep it consistent with “Spaghetti Monday” and “Taco Tuesday” Wednesday and Thursday are usually a new Pinterest find or takeout/delivery and Friday is some kind of fish/shrimp. Saturdays we sometimes have a date night, so we do leftovers or kids’ choice and my husband likes to BBQ on Sundays so it’s chicken or tri tip or steaks with a starch and a veggie.

You can either do the same thing every week, or switch it up. Before the pandemic, when we could actually still go out into public, we would have a “dinner out” night with the family at one of our favorite restaurants and we would plan around things like Girl Scout meetings, baseball practices, and tutoring sessions.

Now that we don’t have all of those other distractions, and this family of mine STILL expects to eat a dinner meal every night, I’ve fallen back on this old rhythm of Capsule Menu planning so that I can keep my sanity, just a little bit. This also makes it much easier when I send my husband (our family’s designated shopper - thanks, honey!) to the grocery store. He knows to always get stuff for pasta, tacos and some kind of seafood situation for dinners. It helps us avoid multiple trips to the store and keeps our family just a little more protected from COVID19 and any of the other viruses ailing the world, and helps with our weekly budget as well.

Decision fatigue still have you down? I’ve developed a course to walk you through setting up an easy meal plan. Plan an entire year’s worth of dinners in under an hour with my Capsule Meal Plan 101 Course. Sign up HERE!!

I can’t wait to cheer you on!

XO,

Shannon