How to use Trello to Organize Your Life (the ultimate meal planning solution)

Trello is the best meal planning system out there.

I’ve tried so many other ways to create a meal plan – paper, recipe binders, and even adding a million things on Pinterest and nothing really stuck for me.

I grew tired of rewriting the same things over and over each week. The paper clutter was driving me crazy and the meal plan kept falling off the wall. And Pinterest was working – until I couldn’t remember where I had saved that dinner recipe I wanted and wasted more time searching for things.

Enter Trello.

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Trello is a website and app that allows you to organize just about everything in your life. I love it so much that I even created a course all around it that you can grab here!

I use Trello for our family calendar, to organize projects for work and home and to map out my goals.

Recently though I started to use Trello for my meal planning! Going digital with your meal plan allows you to save recipes that you see online, take pictures of one from cookbooks (but get rid of the book and clutter), and mix and match meals your family loves.

Tip for using Trello for Meal Planning

If you don’t already have a Trello account for free!

Once you’ve done that you’ll want to create your own board for meal planning. I’ve made one board that is my home base for recipes that I reference whenever I make my monthly meal plan.

Oh and if you’ve never made a monthly meal plan and don’t know where to start, you have to go listen to this podcast episode I did with Elisa from Meal Planning Blueprints where she breaks it ALL down!

When you’re in your board you can create lists for just about anything you need to help with meal planning and menu prepping!

You can make a list of

Family favorite recipes
Organize your meals by theme nights (Mexican Monday, Slow Cooker Sunday etc…)
have a pantry inventory right on your board
Or even price lists for different stores

These lists come in handy because, while I prefer to use Trello on my computer, it’s also a great app! I reference mine all the time when I am out of the house and need to get something. I check my pantry inventory to see what I need or I might check out a recipe that I saved and see what I have to get.

Trello Card Features for Meal Planning (the card template you need to make)

Each card has some really cool features that you can use to make your meal planning board even more amazing!

Labels

You can use labels to organize by type of cuisine or even how long something might take to make! Then you can filter your cards when you’re looking for something to make!

Attachments

I use the attachment feature a ton when it comes to my meal planning board.

If I see something on Pinterest that I’m actually going to make (and not just something that is really cool but way out of my league), I can save the link directly to my card. This eliminates me having to scroll and re-search Pinterest for it later!

Checklists

Checklists are a great way to create a shopping list for that recipe. If you copy the recipe into the card description, you have everything you need!

Just create a checklist and copy it in and BAM, Trello will make a checklist right there in the card for you!

Trello Menu Planning

Now when you sit to create your meal plan, you have everything in one spot. You can filter, move things around and customize it!

I like to add calendar power up to this board so that I can create a list for the month and move recipe cards around. The calendar power up allows you to look at things easily. You can get one power up for free with the basic plan!

Once you make a recipe you can add it to the bottom of the list so that you keep your monthly meal plan rotating or add it to a list labeled ‘recipes made’. You can even add labels whether the family likes it or not so you know how often to add it into the rotation!