How a Prep Day Can Save Weeknight Dinners

I got my first job as a waitress when I was 15 years old. There’s a lot more to being a waitress than just taking orders and delivering food. The key to a high-functioning restaurant is the quality of the prep work done before the dinner shift starts. At every restaurant I worked at, the waitresses and cooks would come in during the down times and prep salads, chop vegetables, mix marinades, or anything else that could be done before the evening rush started. When I started working full-time with 4 little mouths to feed, I applied what I learned in the restaurant biz to our household management. Incorporating a weekly prep day into our routine allowed us to get dinner on the table much faster on weekdays, provided some focused time to teach our kids how to do basic kitchen duties, and allowed us to maintain our tradition of eating family-style meals as life got increasingly busy.

What is a prep day?

Every Sunday afternoon, we prepare anything we can to make our lives easier during the week. At times I’ve been the type of person that lists out all the meals I’m going to cook at the beginning of the week and then shops for those meals. In other seasons, I just kept a larder full of our most commonly used ingredients so we could easily throw meals together at night. Whether your meals are planned or spontaneously created with the available ingredients, a prep day allows you to get the individual ingredients in a state they can be immediately used.

Here’s a list of things of some of the things we do on prep days:

• Put frozen meat in a bowl to freeze or put store-bought meat that won’t be consumed prior to its “use by” date in the freezer
• Peel potatoes and soak in water in the fridge until they are ready to use
• Chop vegetables
• Massage kale–it’s a thing.
• Wash lettuce.
• Chop any vegetables that will keep when chopped
• Caramelize onions or pickle onions (or pickle anything else)
• Soak beans and cook a big pot for either a main course or side dishes (or cook enough you can use it for both)
• Make bread if you’re the type of person to do that
• Brown sausage or meat
• Wash fruits and veggies and store so they are ready to roll
• Put together a casserole that can be warmed up when you get home
• Start dinner in the crockpot (we have church on Sunday nights, so getting something in the crockpot for dinner is essential)
• Prep any marinades or sauces

How to organize a prep day?

I’m prepping solo for the most part these days, but when all four kids were home I had a lot of help! We usually had a couple stations set up at the table, someone at the island, and someone cleaning up. One would peel potatoes, one might wash and chop. I found it helped their little psyches to give them manageable tasks they could do independently.

We’ve all seen the funny reels about moms rage cleaning before company comes over. If you’re not careful, this can easily turn into a ritual that will need to be discussed with your kids’ therapist one day. I’m kidding. A little bit. You have to be pleasant.

How to Keep it Pleasant

• Limit it to 1 to 1.5 hours
• Turn on a movie or music
• Know your role

We didn’t watch a lot of movies when my kids were little. So any time we did, it was special. On prep day, we would bring a computer monitor down (we didn’t even have a TV at the time) and watch a movie while we worked. I tried to time the prep so it would be finished by the end of the show. Most of the time, their work would end before it was over. As the kids got older, the shows offered more depth and frequently offered the bonus of a meaningful conversation about what we watched.

I certainly don’t recommend offering treats or special experiences for most chores. That would be dysfunctional. But one of the things I enjoyed about prep work with my fellow waitresses was the camaraderie and conversation. I wanted to create that kind of camaraderie with my kids on prep day. You can do that with a rare movie or good conversation. It’s healthy for your kids to learn that work is what you make it. It can be fun or it can be drudgery. It’s all about the choices we make.

It helps to know your role. Sometimes I would make the mistake of getting in deep on meal prep that required a lot of concentration. When I did this, every question my kids asked felt like an irritating distraction. I learned that I was “management”. My job wasn’t to do the work, but to facilitate the work. This helped me avoid the “rage-prepping-mom” vibe.

Remember you have finite time. If this requires more than an hour, you probably won’t keep the habit. I started Sunday prep day when my kids were in elementary and kept it going for a decade. We sustained the routine by making it manageable and relatively joyful. I don’t want to glamorize peeling potatoes. I had to force my kids to participate. Quality control checks were required. But, overall, we enjoyed it more than our other chores.

Payoffs during the Week

Mondays and Tuesdays have always been jam-packed at work. With Clay traveling or working as late as I do, neither of us has a lot of time for big weeknight meal prep. But we still have to feed everyone. Knowing there are ingredients I can just throw together or heat up when I get home made it easy to eat around the table. It’s so nice to have a crockpot meal ready or a casserole I can just throw in the oven when I get home. We eat out less and eat healthier meals as a result. It takes less time than driving to and from a restaurant and spreads the load to everyone. It’s a big win for our family.