While I re-started bullet journaling on January 1 this year, completed with a proper Leuchterm 1917 notebook in Army Green and a dedicated pen I got from a shop in California I really wish I remember the name, I haven’t yet shaken my weekly (meal) planning using Google Keep. After all – I just checked my archive – I’ve been doing it since August 6, 2019.
In January, I created a weekly meal planning log where I did plot out Kiddo lunches, our lunches, breakfast and dinner, knowing that things could change based on mood and ingredient availability and time constraints. For the month of February and as far as I tell, going forward, I am back to planning in Google Keep. It’s not redundant with the bullet journaling which I might blog about later. The major point about bullet journaling so far is that I struggle to add to it every day! And there is a definite theme to what I add – blog posts to complete!
My Google Keep system is simply this: Monday through Sunday with everything listed, separated by hyphens: Kiddo’s breakfast and school lunch so I don’t get (too) redundant, my lunch to use up leftovers or plan for Baby being around, dinner, any activities like going to shops, appointments, Kiddo’s activities. Following the Monday-Sunday list, are meal ideas as I come across them or I’m inspired from my lists in One Note and Chrome bookmarks to prepare for the first time. Following that are preliminary shopping lists for the shops I don’t often frequent, so that hopefully I don’t forget things when I do prepare the real shopping list.
Sometimes on a weekend in the very middle of the night, I scroll through recipe ideas and Instagram and find a few recipes I want to try and then I fill out the whole week of dinners.
I don’t normally highlight the list, categorizing by colour, and have done so below only for illustrative effect. Yes, these days I even note when I wash my hair. My hair is used to being washed every two days now (it was previously stretched to like four or five days) and is really gross after three days now!
Someone on Instagram posted someone else’s posted menu and I just had to create one, too. Handwriting fonts are my jam.
No, I don’t do this every week and while I post most of our meals to Instagram Stories (since a few months into pandemic), I do not post the whole week. Again, that whole uncertainty thing.
I showed this image to my sister – because I don’t often to this – and she marveled how none of our dinners consist of leftovers. We certainly do eat leftovers for lunch and might have some with dinner, but there’s often fresh food. In a pinch, the kids have a choice and sometimes choice goes a long way to Kiddo eating willingly. I also told my sister that this might all be a prelude to me shutting down and all we do is subscribe to a prepared meal service because I quit. Haha.
This is just a glimpse of a page from my Google Keep archive. These weekly notes go back to August 6, 2019!
It basically started at the time Baby was a month old and all of my days were blending together such that when I was filling in my Five-Year Journal backlog, I couldn’t remember what happened differently from one day to the other!
I also started making re-usable shopping lists because there are things – in upper case – that I shop for nearly every week. I share this list with NPY when he goes and hide (marked the checkbox) the ones I don’t want him to bother with. If I need to know WTH I wanted to buy a jalapeno pepper one week, I will note in parenthesis which recipe it’s for.
Why haven’t I been colouring in my Google Keep notes? I think I will start.
