MPM: Pros and cons of meal planning

Our town is pretty small. I don’t mean that everybody knows each other, I mean that it is approximately 3km x 1km. So, literally.... small. 

Well this weekend we’ve had four power outages in our tiny town! Unbelievable! 

And my husband and I are *both* sick at the same time. Unbelievable! 

Not a fun weekend with four kids running around. Did I mention we’ve had storms? We’ve had storms. 

It got me thinking about how meal planning can be both a good thing and a bad thing. 

For example, this weekend it was lucky that I already had tacos planned for Saturday night as I was able to pop the meat into the slowcooker in the morning (a gamble, as I hadn’t ever done it like that before) and then a little later on I prepped the taco toppings and stored them in the fridge. I already knew what we were having for dinner and already had the ingredients so was able to tackle the meal-prep in short bursts as I felt up to it. Despite being sick, I was able to provide my family with a delicious, healthy home-cooked meal with minimal effort. 

However....  not every meal we have planned recently would be cookable in a power outage and in a worse case scenario, if the outage was long, then a weeks worth of food or more could be spoiled (our power company provides financial reimbursement of $80 if the power is out for longer than 12hrs which is not even a week’s groceries) 

So I jotted down some notes about our fortnightly meal planning; 

PRO: 

• Saves money 
• Saves sanity (don’t have to think on the spot)
• Saves time (shopping less, plus meals can be prepped earlier) 

CON: 

• Less flexibility
• Might miss out on some specials/sales
• Potential food spoilage (power cut or if you end up eating away from home for whatever reason)
• Storage space can be an issue  
• More planning/funds needed up front 

I know the list has ended up with more ‘con’ than ‘pro’ but it’s not an exhaustive list and I think the pros are stronger than the cons. 

I’d be really interested to know whether anyone else has some pros or cons to add to the list? And whether those pros and cons change for weekly/fortnightly/monthly meal planning?