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Menu planning is a great way to save money and stay organized. It can also help you eat like a homesteader by making the most of all that homegrown and home raised food you have in your freezer and on your pantry shelves. But some people feel menu planning is just a frustrating time-consuming mess that does nothing but cause more stress. Is that you? Are you nodding your head in agreement? Let’s see if your menu planning frustration is caused by one of these five common reasons, and then we can look at some suggestions for how to make meal planning work for you. (Don't want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!) Homestead menu planning issue #1: Schedules in your house are messed up and people aren’t eating at the same time. Oftentimes when we talk about menu planning, we assume the family is sitting down to eat at the table together. A nice family meal, right? Right. But there are some seasons on the homestead (like planting and harvest) that can lead to some late, eat on the run, or more people than you expected at a different time meals. And, let's be honest—as modern homesteaders, we have many commitments that take us off the homestead. How many of you have looked at the calendar and thought, “gee, when is the next time we will all be together to eat supper?” See Tuesday through Friday? Yeah. Not a lot of  "together as a family" meals going on. Menu planning through the chaos of life can be frustrating, to say the least. Especially when you're dreaming of putting on a big spread every night that your great-grandma would be proud of. How to re-think menu planning: Understand that having all the fixins for sandwiches or salads is still menu planning. See, one of the main benefits of menu planning is that it saves money. The meal you're planning doesn't have to be a big fancy Pinterest famous meal. Planning ahead to have the fixings for sandwiches is a better use of your money than stopping at the fast food joint on the way to practice or the meeting. Use your menu planning calendar —we make use of a giant dry erase board in our dining room—to let everyone know that tonight’s meal is sandwiches, chips, and cookies for grabbin' on the go! (And then make sure you've prepped those items to be quick to grab!) Make use of  Crock-Pot or Instant Pot meals that people can serve from when they are able to eat. Some great posts with recipes to check out are: Instant Pot and Slow Cooker Meals -- 104 Homestead White Bean Chicken Chili - Attainable Sustainable Homemade Baked Beans in the Instant Pot - Attainable Sustainable 45 Most Popular Crock Pot Recipes - The Country Cook 10 Best Instant Pot Recipes for Everyone - Damn Delicious Homestead menu planning issue #2: Forgetting to prep for the meal. Deciding what to make is only one part of the meal planning process. Another really important part is remembering to do the required prep for the meal. You can have the best intentions of serving a fried chicken dinner on Friday night, but if you forget about the chicken in the freezer until Friday at 3 pm, you probably won’t be serving it. It's great to eat from the freezer that you've worked so hard to fill but successful menu planning means you have to keep on top of the items that are needed and the prep work involved to make the meals happen as intended. How to make it work for you: Our weekly menu plan is written on a dry erase board in the dining room. If something needs to be thawed or an ingredient needs something special done to it, we note that on the board, usually with a asterisk. When the chicken is taken out of the freezer, we erase the asterisk. That way at a glance, I can look and see if there is something that needs to be taken care of for an upcoming recipe and it can be on my radar. Homestead menu planning issue #3: Trying to menu plan too far in advance.