Perhaps you’ve decided to try out meal planning. You’ll likely find that it can be an effective method for ensuring that everyone in your home receives a healthy meal with little effort. For those who are busy or just plain exhausted at the end of your day, then meal planning can completely change your life.

Before you can start planning your meals, however, you need to have a few recipe ideas. To help ensure you get started the right way, here a few general recipe tips to keep in mind.

Store Recipes Somewhere Easily Accessible

Let’s be honest, we’re all lazy people. Some of us can become burned out on an idea at even the smallest hint of extra effort. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Work is difficult and exhausting. Add adult responsibilities on top of that and it’s no wonder you’re looking for minimal work.

To ensure that your meal planning is successful, you need to store your recipes in an easily accessible place. More than that, they need to stay organized.

No one wants to spend a few minutes flipping through a book trying to find the right recipe. Organization is going to be your best friend in this regard.

You may want to consider storing your recipes on a handle of one of your cupboards. Or, just have it in the top drawer next to your cooking instruments.

Have a General Consensus of Everyone’s Tastes

One of the worst things that you can do is cook a meal large enough to have leftovers that carry you through the week only to find that no one likes it. That’s time, money, and effort wasted.

Before you start looking or creating a recipe, you should speak to your partner/spouse (or anyone else in who you will be cooking for) about what they like to eat and what they don’t like to eat.

Be sure to include yourself in this interview, too. Once you have a taste collection, you can then start to look for and create recipes according to those tastes.

Stick with Themes

Another recipe idea is to stick with a theme for certain days. For example, Tuesdays can be taco night or soup night. This can make creating recipes easy. It also allows your week to be broken up just enough to ensure that you don’t get bored with the same meal.