Meal Planning Template: Use Trello to Simplify Your Life

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to cooking and eating, I just want something easy. I don’t want to keep track of my recipes or browse Pinterest each time I need to make dinner. I also don’t love spending hours on my weekends meticulously designing a meal plan and complicated shopping list.

That’s why I turned to one of my favorite productivity tools, Trello, to create the perfect meal planning template. And I’m excited to share it with you! 

What is Meal Planning?

Essentially, making a meal plan is about answering the question “What’s for dinner?” ahead of time. It’s a way of being organized enough that it’s easier for you to make healthy, frugal, or waste-reducing decisions—whatever your individual goal.

If you’ve ever gotten to the end of a long workday and opted for takeout instead of cooking a meal at home (even if your pantry was well-stocked), you’ve experienced decision fatigue. The more decisions you make throughout your day (for instance: what to wear, what time to take the dog for a walk, or how to phrase those ten work emails), the more fatigued your brain becomes. 

By the time you reach the end of the day, you’re ready to throw in the towel. That’s why having to choose what to make for dinner at that moment is more likely to result in taking the easy way out—which for my husband and me, means ordering a pizza. 

That’s where meal planning comes in! By setting aside some time on the weekend (or whatever part of the week/month works best for you), you can make all the decisions necessary to follow through on eating more homemade, nutritious meals throughout the week.

How to Meal Plan 

1. Decide Which Style Works for You

Now, before we get to my system, it’s a good idea to consider the meal planning style that works for you. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you crave variety? You might want totally different recipes each week. Don’t try to eat the same thing on rotation every week or month; you’ll be sure to rebel against even the most carefully-crafted system.
• Do you want a routine? You may find success setting a category for each day (for example, Taco Tuesday, Wok Wednesday, etc.). That gives you a bit of variety each week on what specific recipes to choose, but you have a basic dietary “uniform” that gives your week some consistency.
• Do you want to spend as little time as possible cooking during the week? Maybe you have a job with long hours or you just hate cooking. Try choosing big-batch meals that freeze well or that you can prep easily on the weekends, then eat throughout the week.
• Do you hate leftovers? In that case, don’t try to meal prep (no matter how big of a craze it is right now). Sure, you could still do a bit of vegetable chopping on the weekends to make your weeknight dinners easier to throw together. But overall, opt for a meal-planning routine that gives you several smaller recipes that only feed your family once.

2. Decide How Many Recipes to Plan Weekly

A good starting point is to plan for 5 dinners per week. But you may eat out often—which is fine! Build that into your schedule, and don’t try to set unrealistic expectations for yourself at first.

I used to be the queen of unrealistic expectations; I’d make grandiose plans about cooking six or seven complicated meals in a week, spend a fortune on groceries for the recipes, and then end up wasting a lot of produce because we ate out a lot anyway.

If you want to start by planning only three home-cooked recipes per week, that’s totally okay. You may find that as you get the hang of planning and cooking recipes at home, you find yourself gradually eating at home more over time. 

Also, you may want to consider how many different kinds of recipes to plan for weekly. For instance, you could choose a certain number of “Quick,” “Complex,” “Slow Cooker,” and “Freezable” recipes per week. You may only want to spend one night a week cooking something that takes longer than 30 minutes, whereas you may prefer to choose two Instant Pot recipes and two quick recipes per week.

The more formulaic you can be when setting ground rules, the easier it will be to simply choose recipes to fit your routine each week.

3. Stock up on Great Recipes 

It’s probably obvious, but a key to successful meal planning is having a list of quality recipes to draw from. Curate a recipe box (or Pinterest board, or *cough* Trello board *cough*; whatever floats your boat) and make sure that each recipe in your list is something you actually like to eat.

Some of my favorite recipes include vegan quesadillas, homemade vegan chili, and crispy breakfast potatoes (who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner??).

And if you don’t mind leftovers, consider stocking up on recipes that make several portions. That way, you can plan for one recipe to stretch for two or even three meals.

4. Set Aside Time Each Weekend

Make it a habit to get your meal plan, grocery list, and shopping done whenever you have free time. I like to break up this daunting task into short tasks throughout the weekend, but do whatever works best for you!

Friday: plan your meals and make a quick grocery list. Build a list based on your chosen recipes, then go through your kitchen to check for anything you already have. 

Add other staple items that you’re out of, too (bread, milk, cereal, lunch items, etc.). The Trello recipe below has a special card designated for your staple items, so feel free to customize it into a list of the things you always want to have on hand. Then, simply check those items each week as you’re making your shopping list.

Tip: We keep a magnetic whiteboard like this one on our fridge so that we can add staple items to a list as soon as we start running low. It helps to have a handy list within reach; otherwise, we’d forget before we had a chance to write it down!

Saturday: make a grocery run. Hit up your farmer’s market or local grocery store. Don’t forget those reusable bags!

Sunday: set aside a little time to meal prep. Now, not everyone loves meal prepping. Personally, I hate it—but Elana swears by it. If you struggle to work up the energy to cook on weeknights, try setting aside time to pre-chop veggies. Or, if you’re ambitious, cook a freezer-friendly recipe or two so that all you need to do the night of is reheat it. 

How to Use Trello to Meal Plan 

Trello is a great free tool that you can use for anything from task management to vision boards. And it just happens to make a great place to store your meal plan and recipes!

Trello boards are great for visual people. You can create as many boards as you like and customize them with free photos or color schemes. Within boards, you can create lists and organize individual cards within the lists. Cards (which, in our meal planning template, store individual recipes) can be dragged and dropped from list to list at any time.

Check out this introduction to using Trello for the basics! But Trello is pretty intuitive, so you can also just create a free account and dive in.

1. Import Your Recipes

The great thing about using Trello as your meal planner is that it can double as your recipe book. I tried and failed to keep a Pinterest board with all of my recipes collected from favorite blogs and websites—it just got too frustrating to click through to the article and watch it jump around as different ads and popup videos loaded on my small screen.

With Trello, I simply create a new card for each new recipe I’m adding to my rotation. You can copy (CTRL+C) the URL of your favorite recipe, then hover over the “Add a card” bar at the bottom of a Trello board list. Don’t click ‘Add a card’; simply hit paste (CTRL+V). Trello should populate a new card with the image, link, and title. Fancy, right??

If you want to go the extra mile, you can copy and paste the ingredients and directions directly into the card’s description. That way, you won’t need to wait for the website to load while you’re trying to cook.

2. Decide How You’ll Organize Your Board

The left half of the board is dedicated to your weekly or monthly planning. You should decide the best way to visualize your plan, and set up your lists accordingly. Feel free to archive any lists you won’t use (click the three dots and select ‘Archive this list’) or rename the lists to suit your needs (click into the title to edit it).

Will you plan weekly or monthly? Our meal planning template is set up with a list for weeks 1-4 of the month. If you want to take a simple weekly approach, you can archive Weeks 2-4 and rename Week 1 to something like ‘This Week’s Recipes.’

Or maybe you’d rather have a weekly uniform (Taco Tuesday, Wok Wednesday, etc.). If you’re planning weekly, you may want to rename the lists to reflect these designations.

Or, add “placeholder cards” to the list. Name them for your categories (‘Taco Tuesday,’ etc.). When it comes time to plan specific recipes, simply drag and drop recipe cards beneath each placeholder card.

Another option is to have a set number of recipes from each category per week (“Quick meal,” “Slow cooker,” etc.). If that’s the case, you may want to rename the Weeks 1-4 lists as categories.

For instance, your lists could be titled “3 Quick Meals,” “1 Complex Meal,” and “2 Slow Cooker Meals.” Then each week, you can drag the right number of corresponding recipe cards into the list.

3. Update your “Staple items” card

In the “Shopping List” column, there’s a card labeled “Staple items.” Click into it and update the checklist to reflect all the food items you want to keep on hand week after week.

Then, when you make your shopping list each week, you can simply check this card against the items in your kitchen to make sure you aren’t forgetting to replenish anything.

4. Use the Meal Planning Template

And you’re all set! When you’re ready to make your plan each week (or month), drag and drop recipe cards into the appropriate list(s). Click into the card to see ingredients and write them down in your shopping list.

Then, check your Staple Items card to make sure your kitchen is stocked with other everyday essentials.

Throughout the week/month, drag and drop recipe cards back into their original lists as you make them. If you like, you can add comments to the card noting the last time you made the recipe and any other notes you have.

Advanced Tips for this Meal Planning Template

1. Use Butler to Automate Your Process

Trello is an amazing tool and offers several ways to automate and customize your meal plan! One awesome feature is the Butler tool, which lets you set up custom automations based on your board and unique needs.

For example, I’ve told my Butler that whenever I move a recipe card into my Week 1 list, Butler should automatically assign a deadline to that card for the first Sunday of the next month.

Butler will do the same for Week 2 (set a deadline for the second Sunday) and so on. Once I’ve moved cards into their respective lists, I can click the calendar view. From there, I can drag and drop recipes to the day of the week that I want to make them.

I’ve created different commands for Butler to remove deadlines once I move cards back to their home lists, just to keep things clean. Easy-peasy!

2. Use Checklists for Easy Shopping Lists

Each card has the capability to include checklists, so if you want to go above and beyond, you can create a checklist of the ingredients needed for each recipe card.

Then, you can create a shopping list card, and then when creating your shopping list, you can just import the checklists from the recipe cards you’ve chosen for that week.

Then it’s a matter of comparing your checklists to what’s in your kitchen; check off the items you already have, and then you have a ready-made shopping list!

Fair warning, though: the only downside to this method is that the ingredients are divided by recipe, and there’s no way to reorganize them across recipe checklists.

Check Out Our Easy Meal Planning Template!

Meal planning is a great way to take some stress and decision fatigue out of your life. Whether your goal is to eat healthier, spend less money, or create less food waste (I feel you on all counts!), a solid meal planning template and routine will help you get there.

Click here to access our free meal planning template on Trello — I hope it gives you as much joy as it does me! As always, tag us on Instagram @plum_savory and comment below with your thoughts 🙂

Cheers,
Nicole