Deciding what to make for dinner every night of every week in perpetuity is a task far more draining than it may seem on its face. And when you’re feeding a family, the mental load of this duty becomes even heavier. To streamline the meal planning process in her household, Amy Palanjian, the content creator behind Yummy Toddler Food, came up with a simple dinner framework for her family: designating a theme for each night of the week. So in her house, Sundays are soup night, Mondays are pasta, Tuesdays are quesadillas or burritos, Wednesdays are chicken, Thursdays are something from her freezer, Fridays are pizza and Saturdays are a clean-out-the-fridge dinner. “I always have a starting place, which means I go into dinner planning with my options already narrowed (YAY for not trying to decide from the entirety of the internet!),” Palanjian, a recipe developer, cookbook author and mom of three, wrote in a viral post on her Instagram. “Plus, it gives me a chance to be flexible to use the ingredients I have or that are on sale. AND it builds in routine for my kids who like things to be predictable.” This approach to feeding her family gives her “more bandwidth for the rest of life,” she added. Palanjian started implementing this dinner plan in 2019, after her third kid was born, she told HuffPost, to make it easier for her to get dinner on the table. “I took inspiration from our daycare at the time, who used a similar rotation in their menu. I had seen my kids learn to like a wider range of foods during lunch there and realized they had a schedule that allowed for routine and familiarity, but also flexibility to change within the routine,” said Palanjian, who wrote about this approach in her cookbook “Dinnertime SOS.” She found that pre-selecting a category for each day of the week made dinner planning feel much less overwhelming without being too rigid. “So if I assign ‘pasta’ to Mondays, I know I will be making pasta, but within that theme I can choose which type of pasta and which type of sauce,” she explained. “That can be based on the season, the groceries we have on hand, our preferences, or a craving. Or even my energy level or when and whether I have a lot or a little time to cook.” Palanjian also tweaks the theme nights throughout the year. So during the summer, she might swap Sunday soup night for a grilling night instead. “It’s really flexible and you can adjust it however you like,” Palanjian said. “So I am not locked in to anything other than the general idea, which means I am always considering the context of my life on any given night.” Lindsay Taylor, the woman behind @the.food.doula account on Instagram, has recently been trying out this method with her own family. She’s found that it’s made meal planning less stressful and less time-consuming — and she appreciates not having to come up with dinner ideas from scratch every night, she said. Getty ImagesFish Fridays and pasta Saturdays can help eliminate some of the decision fatigue surrounding meal planning.“In my own busy family with kids, and in the work I do creating recipes for postpartum and early motherhood, I’ve found that a big part of the overwhelm around meal prep and cooking is how mentally draining it can be,” Taylor, author of “The Nourished Mother,” told HuffPost. “There are so many micro decisions involved! It goes beyond the emotional and mental capacity many of us have to dedicate to dinner.”What works for her is assigning a different protein to each day of the week — one night is salmon, another is chicken, another is steak, etc. “I don’t even need to have the full meal figured out,” Taylor said. “I’ll prep the protein when I have 20 minutes to spare — air fry some salmon bites, marinate chicken thighs — and let the rest come together depending on what’s in my fridge and how much energy I have for cooking.”She’s also been adding in themes that align with foods she’s intentionally trying to eat more of. For example, she made Thursday “plant protein night” to ensure she’s getting more lentils and beans in her diet. “I often forget to turn to these proteins, but since it’s a category in the week, I don’t have to remember,” Taylor said. Registered dietitian Maya Feller of Maya Feller Nutrition said structuring dinners in this way can be great for individuals or families who like having a plan in place and want to reduce decision fatigue. “This technique gives you flexibility within the routine based on personal preferences, as well as what foods are accessible,” Feller, author of the cookbook “Eating from Our Roots,” told HuffPost. “It allows the home cook to have variety within the category. For example, pizza could be make-your-own or frozen. And pasta could include any vegetable or protein.” Choose categories that are realistic and appealing to the members of your household, Feller suggested. “For example, in my home, we really like stir fry so perhaps we would choose that as one of our themes,” she said. “I love soup, but it’s not a favorite among everyone, so I would not choose a soup night. In order to be successful, the themes need to be foods that you actually enjoy.” Palanjian highlighted the fact that this dinner framework is customizable — use it however you’d like. And shortcuts are totally welcome. “You can do breakfast for dinner, sandwiches, cereal, takeout, snack night,” she said. “Doing this doesn’t mean you need to make everything from scratch. The purpose is to give your brain a break, not make more work for yourself.” And remove the pressure to constantly make new or different dishes if you don’t have the bandwidth (or desire) to do so. “The truth is, repetition is perfectly normal and nourishing,” Taylor said. “If Monday is curry night, for instance, and you have one go-to curry, that’s OK! You can make small changes: have it on quinoa or a bed of cabbage instead of rice one week, try the same recipe with a different protein, all while keeping the time and energy expense feeling manageable.”