How to Plan Your Family Meals with SimpliHome's Meal Planner

The "what's for dinner?" question. Every parent dreads it. It's 5:30pm, everyone's hungry, and instead of having an answer you're rifling through your mental recipe catalogue, opening the fridge, and eventually ordering a takeaway.

SimpliHome's meal planner gives you the answer in advance. You spend 10–15 minutes on a Sunday building the week's plan, and from Monday to Sunday, the question answers itself.

#How the Meal Planner Works

The meal planner is a weekly grid — each day has slots for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You fill each slot with either:

• A recipe from your SimpliHome recipe library
• A manual entry — a simple text note like "Leftovers", "Eating Out", "School Dinner", or "Fend for yourselves"

Household members can see the meal plan so everyone knows what to expect for the week.

#Building a Meal Plan

Go to Recipes → Meal Planner (or just Meal Planner in the navigation).

You'll see the current week's planner grid with empty slots.

#Assigning a Recipe to a Meal Slot

1. Click on a meal slot (e.g., Tuesday Dinner)
2. A panel opens with your recipe library
3. Search or browse for the recipe you want
4. Click the recipe to assign it

The slot now shows the recipe name. Click through to see the full recipe if needed.

#Adding a Manual Entry (No Recipe)

Not every meal needs to be a full recipe. For quick meals, easy nights, or planned eating out:

1. Click on a meal slot
2. Switch to Manual Entry mode
3. Type the meal description: "Beans on toast", "Leftovers", "Pizza night", "School dinner"
4. Save

Manual entries appear in the planner alongside recipe-based meals, so the week's plan is always complete.

#Assigning Meals to Household Members

If different members of the household are eating different things on a given day — perhaps one child is at a school event while others are home — you can assign each meal to specific household members.

1. When adding or editing a meal slot, look for Assign Members
2. Select which household members this meal is for
3. Save

This is optional but useful for larger households with varied schedules.

#Planning Strategy: How to Build a Good Week

A week of meals doesn't need to be a gourmet masterclass. It just needs to answer the question before it gets asked.

#The 5+2 Rule

Plan 5 proper dinners and leave 2 nights flexible:

• 2 nights: quick easy meals (pasta, stir fry, eggs)
• 2 nights: slightly more involved (roast, curry)
• 1 night: something new from your recipe library
• 2 nights: leftovers, takeaway, or eating out

#Rotate Your Favourites

Your household has 8–12 dinners it loves. Rotate them. Variety matters, but reliability matters more. A known hit beats an adventurous flop on a Wednesday evening.

#Plan Around the Week's Events

Check the calendar before planning meals:

• Late-night events on Tuesday? Quick dinner, not a 90-minute roast
• Kids at different places Thursday? Consider simple options that can be eaten at different times
• Guests on Saturday? Something more impressive from the recipe library

The SimpliHome calendar and meal planner live side by side for exactly this reason.

#Batch Cooking

If you're making a bolognese on Monday, make double and plan it again for Thursday's leftovers. Schedule this in the meal planner — both nights, same meal. Less cooking, less waste, more predictability.

#Viewing Previous Meal Plans

The meal planner keeps a history. Navigate backwards through weeks to see what you planned (and actually ate) in previous weeks.

This is useful for:

• Remembering what worked well
• Avoiding accidentally repeating the same week
• Building a reference library of actual household meal patterns

#Meal Planning and Dietary Needs

If household members have specific dietary requirements, the recipe assignment flow respects this.

Filter recipes by allergy/dietary tag when selecting meals:

1. When the recipe selector opens, use the filters at the top
2. Select a dietary filter (e.g., Gluten-free)
3. Only matching recipes will appear

This ensures you don't accidentally assign a recipe that isn't safe for a household member.

#Tips for Sticking to the Plan

Plan on Sunday, not Monday. The day before the week starts is the right time — it gives you the weekend to check the fridge and pick up anything you're missing.

Keep it realistic. A plan that expects you to cook a complex meal every night won't survive contact with a busy week. Plan what you'll actually do, not what you aspire to do.

Don't delete the plan if you deviate. Ate out on Wednesday instead of the planned pasta? That's fine. Leave the plan as it was — it still helped you know what you could cook if you wanted to.

Build the recipe library first. The meal planner is most useful when you have 20+ recipes to draw from. Spend time importing your favourites before planning — see the recipe library guide.

#From Meal Plan to Shopping

Once your meal plan is set, you know exactly what you're cooking and therefore what ingredients you need. This makes the weekly shop significantly more efficient — you shop to the plan rather than guessing what you might need.

In future, SimpliHome will support automatic shopping list generation from the meal plan. For now, use the recipes' ingredient lists as your shopping guide.