Free Meal Planner Printable with Grocery List (5 Pages, PDF)

This free meal planner printable helps you decide what to eat before the week starts, so you shop once, cook with less stress and throw away less food. It pairs a weekly planner with a grocery list, which is where most of the time and money gets saved.

It is made for families, couples, students and anyone tired of the daily “what’s for dinner?” question. You get 5 pages with watercolor fruit and vegetables in tomato red, carrot orange, leafy green and eggplant purple, in both A4 and US Letter sizes.

What’s inside the free meal planner printable

Here are all five pages, in the order they print.

How to plan a week of meals in 20 minutes

The trick is to plan in a set order, so you aren’t staring at an empty grid. Sit down with the weekly meal planner, the grocery list and a pen.

1. Check your calendar (2 minutes). Mark busy evenings, nights out and days with sports or late meetings. Those nights need a quick meal or leftovers.
2. Check the pantry and fridge (5 minutes). Use the pantry inventory page to see what you already have and what expires soon. Plan to use those items first.
3. Fill in dinners first (5 minutes). Dinner is the hardest meal, so start there. Choose 4 or 5 dinners and leave 1 or 2 nights for leftovers or something simple.
4. Add breakfasts, lunches and snacks (3 minutes). Keep these on repeat. Two breakfast options and a couple of lunch ideas are plenty for most weeks.
5. Write the grocery list (5 minutes). Go meal by meal and add what you’re missing to the right section: Produce, Dairy & Eggs, Meat & Fish, Bakery, Pantry, Frozen, Drinks or Household.

A sample week of dinners

• Monday: sheet-pan chicken and vegetables
• Tuesday: tacos with beans, salsa and salad
• Wednesday: leftovers from Monday
• Thursday: pasta with tomato sauce and a side of greens
• Friday: homemade pizza night
• Saturday: slow-cooker chili, with extra portions frozen for later
• Sunday: roast dinner, with leftovers planned for Monday lunch

Notice how some meals feed the next one. Cooking once and eating twice is one of the easiest ways to make a meal plan easier to keep.

Free printable

Meal Planner & Grocery List

Get the weekly meal planner, grocery list, monthly dinner plan, recipe cards and pantry inventory in one print-ready PDF.

• PDF
• 5 pages
• A4 & US Letter
• Free for personal use

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Free for personal use. Print at 100% scale (“actual size”), or open it in GoodNotes or Notability.

How to use the grocery list and pantry inventory together

The grocery list is split into eight sections with 6 checkbox lines each. That layout follows the way most stores are arranged, so you can shop one area at a time instead of walking back and forth.

• Write items in the order you walk the store. If your store starts with fresh produce, fill in that box first.
• Use Household for non-food items. Dish soap, paper towels and trash bags are easy to forget when you’re focused on meals.
• Tick items as they go into the cart. The checkboxes make it easy to see what’s left at a glance.

The pantry inventory has 18 rows with Item, Have, Need and Expires columns. Use it for staples you buy again and again: rice, pasta, oats, flour, canned tomatoes, beans, oil, spices and so on. Write the quantity you have, what you need to top up, and the expiry date for anything that won’t last. Before each shop, glance at the Need column and copy those items onto your grocery list.

If you keep a freezer full of batch-cooked meals, a second copy of the pantry page works well as a freezer inventory too.

Planning a month of dinners and saving family recipes

The monthly dinner plan is a 7-column grid headed Mon to Sun, with 35 blank day boxes. Write the dates in the corners and add one dinner per box. It’s useful for spotting patterns, like how often you order takeout, and for setting simple themes:

• Meatless Monday
• Taco Tuesday
• Soup or stir-fry Wednesday
• Pasta Thursday
• Pizza or fakeaway Friday

Themes cut your decisions down to “which pasta?” instead of “what should we eat?”. You can still swap nights when plans change.

The recipe cards page holds two cards with a dashed cut line between them. Each has a Recipe line, Serves and Time lines, an Ingredients box with 6 lines and a Method box with 6 lines. Use them for family favourites you make often, so the recipe is on paper instead of buried in a browser tab. Cut them apart and keep them in a small box, or punch a hole and add them to a binder ring.

How to print it

• Paper: standard 80 to 100 gsm (20 to 24 lb) paper is fine for the planner and grocery list. Print the recipe cards on 160 to 200 gsm card stock so they last in the kitchen.
• Size: choose the A4 or US Letter file to match your paper and print at 100% or “Actual size”.
• Colour: the watercolor produce looks lovely in colour. Black and white works too if you print a new grocery list every week.
• Where to keep it: stick the weekly planner on the fridge with a magnet, and keep spare grocery lists on a clipboard or in a kitchen binder.
• Digital: you can import the PDF into GoodNotes or Notability, then take the grocery list on your tablet or phone when you shop.

More free printables you’ll like

• Free Printable Cleaning Schedule
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• Free Chore Chart for Kids

Planning to cut your food budget too? The Budget Planner Bundle: Money Reset has 17 pages for $9.