Are you sick and tired of having the same meals every night? Do you find that you resort back to the tried and tested meals you know your family will actually eat? If so, then you need to check out my “digital recipe box” that I made on Trello!
I don’t know about you, but I remember everyone in my childhood, from my mom to my grandmothers and all my aunts, all having a recipe box. They would break it out each afternoon and decide what to make for dinner.
True story: I started this blog to be my digital recipe box. I was only going to have recipes on here so that I knew right where to find my favorites. But then I branched out into sharing my process of meal planning and then things just multiplied from there!
So, now I keep a Trello board with links to either the recipe here on the blog, to pins on Pinterest that I want to check out, and to other recipe blogs with ideas that I think we might like.
Let’s dive in to see how you can make a recipe box of your own online.
Get out of that rut momma!
The first step to creating your recipe box of ideas is to start with my favorite online filing cabinet – Pinterest! I start by collecting recipes to try and then keep track of which ones we liked and which were duds.
Over the years I have also created collections of different types of recipes and gathered them here on my blog to keep track of what I liked (and hopefully help others as well!).
From slow cooker meals to freezer meals, I love to find inspiration on Pinterest. This has helped me so much to get out of the rut of making the same old things over and over again.
Use Trello for your recipe box
So, once you’ve made your Pinterest board and filled it with great ideas, how can you keep track of everything. Simple, the same way I keep track of everything else in my life – my handy Trello app.
I have created a board called “dinner ideas” and each card is a recipe with a link. If you have a Trello account, you can copy my board here. And if you want your own free Trello account, click here to create one.
Then just start experimenting with dinners and see how they go. Save the winners in Trello with links right to the recipe so you can come back to them again later. But once you have around two dozen great recipes in your digital recipe box, you won’t ever have to worry about hearing complaining again at dinner time.
Designate a weekly meal planning session
Lastly, the third and final step to ensuring dinner is a success each night in your home is to plan and schedule your meal planning session. I have written about this a ton in previous articles, but to sum it up, I like to spend an hour each Sunday afternoon figuring out what my dinners are going to be for the following week.
One way I do this without breaking the bank is to see what I already have on hand in my pantry and freezer, then plan accordingly when I choose our dinners. As you saw on my Trello board, I have the meals separated by their meat products. So all the chicken dinners are together in one list and so on.
If I grab a bag of frozen chicken breasts from the freezer I can choose to either make Chicken Marigold or Butter chicken. If it happens to be already browned ground beef, I can make Magic Pasta or One-pot cheeseburger casserole. Having all these meals sorted and organized for me is a great way to keep organized come dinner time.
I don’t know about you, but in my home, that hour between 4-5 pm seems like utter chaos and madness. What is it about that time of day that everyone just seems to be so wound up and needy?!?
By keeping myself organized with my weekly planning session and my digital recipe box, I can keep the chaos at bay and ensure we actually eat a semi-homemade dinner instead of resorting to expensive dinners out or the Golden arches.
You can keep it all together momma!
So, there you have it. My steps to success when it comes to getting dinner on the table. It starts with a fun deep dive into Pinterest for some great inspirational recipe ideas. And then you can keep everything organized in a Trello board so you never again have to search the endless scroll again trying to find that one pin you saved that one day.
Finally, ensure that the chaos of dinner time doesn’t send you running for take-out with your weekly planning session that includes picking out your meals for the week.
I hope this system helps you as much as it has helped me! Let me know if you have any questions about my system or my Trello boards!
