Originally published in a lifestyle column for The Daily Star, Hammond, Louisiana

I don’t like to admit to my involvement on social media. It is the perfect place to go and read things that cause anger, frustration, confusion, and hurt. However, it has become useful for some things over the years. From time to time I find really good recipes, or tips and tricks for keeping a clean house. My most recent find has been a regimented meal schedule from a woman on TikTok named KC Davis. 

I especially don’t love to admit my involvement with TikTok (plenty of things on there your teens shouldn’t be seeing), but this is the best place for recipes, DIY home projects, and cleaning tricks by far! KC Davis is a mom, licensed professional counselor, and author who has centered her social media around sharing about her own housekeeping struggles and how she stays organized with a busy lifestyle. 

As I’m in the process of changing jobs, Caleb and I are gearing up for a busy season ahead. I’ll be working full time, which is a big jump from my last job which allowed me to be home a couple days a week. Those days off were usually spent catching up on laundry, dishes, cooking, grocery shopping, taking cars to the shop for maintenance, bringing the dog to the vet….you name it! We were fortunate that I had the time to get these things done during the week, because it opened up our weekends to see friends, work on the house, and hang out with each other. 

Now that my schedule is going to be Monday through Friday, those tasks will have to fall on different days at different times. We’re happy to be making a switch because it’ll be best for us when we do decide to have kids, but it’ll still be an adjustment — especially when it comes to meal planning. 

I love to cook, and usually spent a good bit of the afternoons of my days off cooking a big meal that we’d eat for a couple of days. I’d typically try a new recipe, which made things fun, but could end up with a lot of wasted groceries (for example, buying a new sauce for a recipe, using only two or three tablespoons, and letting the rest go bad in the fridge) and precious time. Furthermore, trying to come up with new ideas every single week had me frustrated.

KC Davis uses a repeating six week meal plan that has all of her family’s meals planned out in advance. When I came across her post about it on TikTok, I knew making a repeating meal plan of my own would solve my problems of figuring out what to cook and wasting new ingredients. At first I was worried I’d get tired of eating the same things every six weeks, but I realized that we have a lot of favorites that Caleb and I won’t get tired of with 44 days in between.

First, I selected about 3-4 meals that I wanted to cook each week, based on our schedule and regular takeout habits (no judgement if you love doing takeout too!). I made sure at least two of the meals I chose for each week were either crockpot or freezer meals that were super easy to make ahead of time. I also made sure that each weekend I planned one meal that wasn’t a “quick and easy” meal, so I’d get to enjoy regular cooking once a week. 

After doing that, I collected all the recipes and made grocery lists for each week of the meal plan, and put it all in one binder together that Caleb and I can both refer to. 

I’m sure the plan will get thrown off every once in a while if we unexpectedly go to a party or a family gathering, but I have tried to plan for flexibility by having a lot of our meals towards the end of the week (Thursdays and Fridays) be quick individual frozen portions that I’ve made ahead. That way, if something comes up or one of our meals from early in the week makes more food than we expected, we simply don’t thaw out that meal and save it for another time! 

All in all, I am mostly hoping it will take the guesswork out of our food during this next chapter where I likely won’t have as much mental energy to think about it. It was a lot to plan up front, but it’s looking like it’ll pay off in the long run! If you’re like me and love to plan as much as possible, a meal schedule might help you take out the guesswork too!