How do you plan your meals for the week?

I plan my meals and grocery shop every Sunday evening.

I'll admit that I have like 10 meals that I constantly rotate because they are sure things my kids will eat and I have them down to memory.

I guess my only tip is to pick a day, sit down and plan your meals throughout the week and go from there.

And if you are wanting to save money, any pasta or rice based dishes will usually last longer.

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If you are a bachelor, you can always grill chicken/porkchops/sausage and eat on it for a few days. Rotate rice/potates/veggies as your sides.

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Not a bachelor but I'll just be cooking for myself and the wife. My problem is once I eat something for dinner and again for lunch I'm tired of it already. I need to have 4 or so dinner options for the week.

I'm looking at a few apps now that are pretty cool. My biggest obstacle is that I'm horrible at organizing.

I typically plan four dinners for the week. I assume leftovers for two meals, and pizza night/takeout for another night. I start at the meat section to see what's on sale, and then I go from there.

Whole chickens are good because you can get a couple meals out of them. Pork tenderloins usually come 2 per pack and are almost always on sale. Salmon is on sale all the time. Rice and beans are your friends as the can stretch meals.

I do a lot of my produce shopping at an international market. Produce there is 1/3 of the price of regular grocery stores.

I'll do a costo run every few months and load up on chicken breasts and thighs.

We do a once-a-month meat run to Sams then vacuum pack meal-sized portions. Chicken breast, pork chops, whole chickens, pork loin, pork tenderloin, chuck roast, wings, ribeyes and ground meat are our usual choices. You can do 2 or 3 different meals with each cut of meat so we always have a nice variety. Add in the ice chest of shrimp bought in season off the boat and all the fish I catch and we're good to go.

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my wife does not eat corn, beans, shrimp, tuna, salmon, beans

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What about beans?

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My biggest obstacle is that I'm horrible at organizing.

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A list of ingredients, and their possible uses, stuck to the outside of the fridge, is a help.

I'm not a fan of daily shopping--I live in a semi-rural area, so it's not practical. I do a huge shop monthly, then weekly or every other week for more perishable items. This forces me to stay organized & know what's in the fridge/freezer to avoid waste.

One important thing, I think, is to remember that it's okay to repeat favorite, well-balanced meals on a regular basis. There is ZERO shame in having roasted veggies (carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower), roasted chicken, and fruit salad every damn Tuesday night if it's a meal you like. And learning to improvise & repurpose the things you cook is an important skill: I might take the leftover roasted chicken, pull it off the bone, and toss with salsa to make chicken tacos the next night. And then take the leftover roasted veg & puree with chicken broth to make a soup, garnished with some quickly-made parmesan croutons.

I don't like day upon day repetition of the exact same leftovers either, so I am always angling to make something "new" out of whatever's in the fridge. Right now, I've got leftover buffalo italian sausage meatballs in red sauce, which we ate over spaghetti yesterday. I will likely pull out the meatballs, slice, and serve as meatball sandwiches topped w/melted mozz & serve a green salad on the side. The sauce part of that dish will be used tomorrow for lunch to make eggs in purgatory (basically eggs skillet-poached in tomato sauce, topped w/some parm), served w/crusty bread for dipping and some riced cauliflower stirred into the sauce.

Cooking improv is like musical improv: you've got to have some basic skills and ingredients before you can riff. Lay in some good, solid frozen & refrigerated staples that make ordinary stuff better, like:
--a hunk of good parmesan & some good cheddar or other quality cheese
--some decent bread, sliced and frozen; baguette or a sliced country loaf
--precooked, frozen protein: make a big batch of pulled pork, or oven-cooked brisket, or roasted pork tenderloin; package in 2-4 serving portions and freeze. You've got nearly instant building blocks for creating a meal.

Every meal doesn't have to be designed as a restaurant would: good plain home cooking keeps most of us alive. There is nothing wrong with a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, or egg salad on toast.

There's a grocery store in between the kids' school and work. I drop them off at 7:30 and run to the store for any ingredients I might need for lunch/dinner. It's not the most efficient, but I'm generally the only one at the office until 8:30 or sometimes 9:00, so it works out for me.

I use the Weekly circulars from the grocery stores that I get in the mail. For instance, I made chuck roast, because it is $2.77 at Albertsons this weekend.