You put in an 8+ hour day at the office dealing with adult coworkers who act like children. Then you come home to your children acting like, well, children. You’re exhausted and burnt out, but your day isn’t over yet. Someone still has to take care of dinner, and that someone is you. FYL. With a silent scream into an imaginary pillow, you kick off your work shoes, shrug off your sweater, and prepare for tonight’s culinary war. While the kids gotta eat, dinner doesn’t have to be so much of a battle. If you’ve found yourself in this situation, we want to help lighten the load. Below, we cover our favorite dinner hacks to help tired moms (and dads) at the end of the day.
Put together a meal plan over the weekend (or off day) to save the daily decision making
The majority of your workday goes to dealing with the Bobs and Lumbergh, so carve out a little time on the weekend when there’s a bigger pool of available hours and plan ahead for the week. Some days are busier than others—that’s just a fact of life. Build that into your dinner routine and your meal planning. On days when you have karate or soccer or ballet, plan for easier, quicker meals. If you know you’ll have a little more time in the morning before school carpool and work but know your evening will be hectic, prep dinner in the slow cooker in the morning and let it do its thing so it’s ready by the time you get home and the gremlins are hungry.
Meal planning for the week can also save time with trips to the grocery store, as you can make your list as you make your meal plan and will only have to make one run for the week. Just don’t forget to check for breakfasts, lunches, and pantry/fridge staples too before you leave. We have a wipe-erase grocery list on the fridge where anyone can put what’s running low or out, and I consult that while meal planning before my husband heads to Wal-Mart.
Try free grocery pickup options
If going to the grocery store is a process, create your grocery list directly on the grocery store’s website as you meal plan and make use of free pickup options. If you aren’t on as strict of a budget, you can even consider grocery delivery, though this is going to add both a delivery fee and tip, which can add up quickly.
Keep your meal plan simple and save favorite recipes where you can quickly reference them
This can help reduce the analysis paralysis and the amount of time spent in decision making mode. If your youngest is at the stage of life where orange foods on their plate cause a Chernobyl level meltdown you don’t have the energy for after work, avoid carrot soup. No one knows better than you what your family (kids and adults included) like and don’t like. Every family has its own favorites. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Every night doesn’t need to be a new culinary adventure. Stick with the tired and true. Depending on how much variety you enjoy, create a list of 14 to 30ish go-to recipes you can cycle through. Put these in a recipe book in your kitchen or in a folder in your bookmarks.
Let ChatGPT help with the prep work
If you’re having a hard time putting together family favorites, or your family is tired of the recipes you currently have on rotation, let the AI overlords help you mix it up. This is especially a game changer if one or more members in your household have dietary restrictions. Start a new chat, let ChatGPT know what foods/things you want to avoid, and ask it for a full week’s meal plan. If there are certain foods your family won’t eat, include them in the exclusion list so you don’t end up with five ideas including turnips. ChatGPT really wants my family to eat more turnips for some reason, but I will not give in. You can easily specify if you want the recipes to be easy to cook, recipes with not that many ingredients, recipes that are quick, etc. It might take a few tries to get the prompts right, but once you’ve got it trained, it’s pretty darn good at remembering and referencing them.
Consider pre-prepping your vegetables or entire meals
Recipes always take me about twice as long as suggested because I take forever to chop and mince and dice veggies. If you have more free time on the weekend, consider knocking some of the prep work out of the way when you get back from the grocery store. Go ahead and pull all the cilantro or parsley leaves off the stems and put them in a leftovers container in the fridge. Chop the broccoli florets off the stems before storing them. Cut up those carrots so they’re ready to roast on Wednesday. This doesn’t work for all foods; apples are going to brown about 47 seconds after you slice them, and you don’t even want to look at that avocado the next day. But many foods will keep, and this can save a ton of time, especially if you’re using carrots and broccoli for a few different recipes during the week.
You can also consider pre-prepped foods, such as frozen carrots and broccoli florets. Buying store-brand frozen veggies versus name brands like Green Giant can help save on the grocery bill while adding convenience. You can do canned veggies as well, but these typically have more chemicals/stabilizers added, which I don’t love.
You may even purchase pre-prepped fresh produce, but this is usually the most expensive option.
If you have zero time during the week to cook, but don’t have the money or don’t love the idea of eating ultra-processed foods every night, consider pre-cooking your meals on the weekend. I used to get together with one of my coworkers, and we’d batch cook a week’s worth of food, then separate it into storage containers based on meal portions and freeze the extras.
And speaking of freezing extras…
Make double batches of your family’s favorite recipes and freeze the extras as a backup meal
If certain recipes in your repertoire freeze well, double everything in the recipe when you make it and then freeze half of it so you have dinner for a future night that all you have to do is defrost the day before and then reheat to serve. This is great when work runs late, you feel like crap, or some life emergency pops up. Some of my favorite meals to double up and freeze include:
- Soups & stews
- Chilis
- Casseroles & bakes (I LOVE my sweet potato Shepherd’s pie)
- Skillet chicken dishes
- Pulled chicken, such as BBQ chicken (I have two bags in my freezer right now, thanks to my Instant Pot)
- Meatballs and meat-based sauces
- And don’t forget breakfasts too! (Pancakes, waffles, muffins, breakfast burritos/sandwiches, etc.)
Label what you freeze with what it is and when you made it. Prioritize a first-in, first-out system so that you aren’t facing a frostbitten mess when you go to defrost them to eat.
Don’t be afraid to lower your standards (at least once in a while)
I’m not saying you should regularly feed your kids frozen chicken nuggets or other heat-and-serve options where you can’t pronounce half the ingredients on the box or bag, but having one or two of these on hand as emergency backups can also help in a pinch for those nights when you really have zero time to spare, or when you had a plan but the day went sideways and now you don’t have time for the original plan. (Because this never happens, right?)
Just like you’re going to make a list of staple recipes to rotate through, make a list of a few backup options. Have one or two on hand. When you use one, add another to the list for the next grocery list to replenish the coffers.
Again, this might not be the healthiest option, but it’s at least cheaper than the alternative unhealthy option of grabbing fast food or DoorDashing from a restaurant.
Divide and conquer the dinner duties whenever possible
Stereotypical gender roles have changed dramatically in the last few decades as women have entered the workforce in greater percentages. Dinner is not your burden to carry alone. Ask for help with part of the process. This can be from your spouse but this isn’t exclusive. There are likely age appropriate tasks you can give your kids as well, even if it’s something as simple as helping gather ingredients or setting and clearing the table. If your kids are in their teens, it’s about time for them to learn how to tackle a few of the staple recipes and make dinners themselves.
In our house, I do the weekly meal planning and prep the grocery list. My husband then does the grocery run to the store. Each night, I do the prep and cooking and put away the leftovers. He handles the dishes, including loading and emptying the dishwasher. We did some trial and error before we settled on these roles, based on what we each preferred more.
And while having defined roles helps, we don’t keep score of who did what. If I have a really rough day, I ask him to handle dinner. When he’s laid up sick, I take care of the dishes. If he’s traveling for work, I have to handle everything and thus text him by the first night to tell him how much I love him and miss him and can’t wait for him to get home so I don’t have to do the dishes anymore.
Start cleanup while dinner cooks
Another way to save time is to start cleaning while dinner is still cooking. If your sheet pan chicken and veggies are going to take 45 minutes to cook, go ahead and wash the knife and cutting board and put away the spices. Anything you can do to speed up the process can help.
If cost isn’t a concern, consider food prep and delivery services
We’re probably a family that’s fortunate enough to afford this option, but we’ve never used it because it’s just so much more expensive versus cooking yourself. This doesn’t mean I’m against it, though, if you have the means to do so. If you’re a high-income earner and you don’t have a lot of debt, the extra cost can be worth the time you’re buying back. At this stage of our lives, this is the problem we’re constantly trying to optimize: buying back our time. Services like HelloFresh do most of the meal planning and prep for you, so all you have to do is cook and serve.
Turn dinner prep time into something you enjoy
One of my favorite takeaways from the book Atomic Habits was about behavior coupling. The idea centers on taking something you don’t like to do and pairing it with something you enjoy. My husband and I have both implemented this into our dinner routines. I pull up an episode of a show I’m binging or listen to an audiobook while I cook, which makes the time much more enjoyable, almost to the point where it’s something I look forward to. And my husband doesn’t mind doing dishes because he throws on his headphones and uses the time to catch up on his favorite podcast.
The final word
While our favorite dinner hacks for busy parents above won’t miraculously make dinner appear on the table fully cooked like at Hogwarts, we hope they can save you time and lower your stress around dinner. I’m sure we overlooked some great ideas, so share yours in the comments so we can update the article to add them in the future!