Checklists, Checklists, Checklists! Menu Planning and Standard Work

So, I've decided that my 80% of my job as a mom revolves around food.  I am pretty much a health nut and we are currently avoiding wheat/gluten.  So, probably 90% of what my family eats is made from scratch---something I am very proud of!  Anyways...as a result I spend a lot of time menu planning, creating shopping lists, going shopping, putting food away, prepping food, cleaning up after meals, and yes, even cleaning up what comes out the other end as a result of food!  I am sure most of you can relate :)

So food planning and preparation is one place that I've applied a lot of lean thinking. One of my favorite lean tools is something we call standard work.  This is defined as the documented best way to achieve the right results.

What does that mean?  As we travel through life and running our households, we are constantly perfecting how we do things -- basically through the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust model.  So standard work simply means, write it down!

If you are familiar with Flylady her "Control Journal" where you keep your morning, afternoon, and evening routines are a perfect example of standard work.

The beauty of standard work is it takes the routine 80% of your tasks and makes them mindless, which frees up your brain to focus on the exceptional 20% of life.

Checklists and fillable forms are my personal favorite forms of standard work.  The idea is to take something that you do over and over again -- and write it down in a standard way, so that next time you can create the same results, with less work, thinking and planning.

I have standard work all over the place and rely on it heavily to keep our house running smoothly, yet allowing me to conserve thinking.

Menu Planning Steps including Standard Work

I know menu planning is a struggle for many, as it is for me, so I've tried to make it as easy as possible.  Here is how I used the tool of standard work to make it easier:

1.  I do two weeks of menu planning at a time using this "standard work" form.  I have it formatted so it prints two per page portrait style.  So what you are looking at is on a half-sized page.

2.  To be honest, I hate deciding on the menu plan -- and it does take me a good chunk of time -- probably 30-45 minutes (time on task--excluding interruptions) for a two week plan.  I usually look at my calendar so that if I have a late night I can plan something easier or out of the freezer. 

To make this step easier, about three months ago I created an index of all our dinners.  This has made a huge difference!  Now instead of pulling out various cookbooks or my notebook of printed recipes mostly from Allrecipes.com, I just look at this.  Here's a photocopy of mine which is handwritten and sorted by type of meat and slow cooker.

Also, about two years ago I implemented "No Cook Night," which is when we have leftovers or easily prepped food like hotdogs.  I typically plan NCN for Wednesday to give me a break in the middle of the week.  I also usually plan another day of leftovers on the weekend.  So I only actually plan 5 meals a week.

3.  I create a grocery list from that menu plan, and go "big" grocery shopping every other week with my 3-year old super shopper helper.

To make this easier, I have created a master shopping list in Excel. It is organized in the same way as the grocery store.  I print about 4-5 copies of these at a time and hang them on the refrigerator.  As I need things I just check them off.  I am on my second major version -- I needed a new one when I started shopping at a different store.

4.  I then transfer one week of meals on my visual board.  Don't be afraid of flexibility --we never have the meals on the board exactly in the way planned.  I will often flip two days, be too tired to cook one day -- so pull something from the freezer and bump the planned meal down.  The idea is that you know you have the food and option to prepare that meal.

Voila!  Menu and food planning made a little easier.

I use standard work to make all sorts of things easier:  daily tasks/routines, packing for travel, planning my day, etc.  I will talk about these in later posts.

Your Next Steps

So what can you do?  Here are some steps to get started:

1.  Make a list of all the meals you eat -- categorized however makes sense to you (main ingredient (beef, pork, chicken...), time to prepare, number of ingredients needed, etc.).

2.  Create or download the meal planning form.  Start with planning one week at a time -- a little less daunting.

3.  Or, how else might you be able to use standardized work to make routine tasks easier?

You can find both individual PDFs of these forms and the Excel Workbook here >>

Good luck!  

Visual Management -- Communicate with your team/family!

I’m back!  Going to try to get a little more momentum on this blog again.

For this post I am going to talk about visual management.  Visual management is a fundamental principle in lean thinking.  The idea behind it is to visually communicate key information to the team regarding what’s going on, who’s doing what, and status of projects.

I’ve found using a family visual board extremely helpful for both me and primarily our nanny to improve our communication and coordination.  My husband utilizes it a little bit.  I still occasionally hear, “Why didn’t I know about this???”  To which I respond, “It’s on the board.”

Here is a picture of our current family visual board, which is in the kitchen/eating area of our home – it includes the week’s dinners, schedule highlights, things coming up next week, and there is a section for the flylady zone – but right now that is more of a stretch goal than anything ;)

Here’s a picture:

Since our kids are little, the primary schedule coordination that occurs is my training schedule with our nanny – this is where the board really helps to prompt conversations about when I need to leave early or if we are working different days that usual.

So what’s nice about a family visual board is that it can help to get your family more or less on the same page for the upcoming week.  My ideal is then to “huddle” (10 minute stand up meeting) at the board every Sunday evening to quickly review what the week is going to look like and make sure everyone knows where they need to be.  My hubby isn’t quite on board for that yet…but maybe when the kids are into activities.

So, how can you get started?

1.  What information would be helpful to communicate? Car pool schedule, activities, who’s doing dinner….
2.  Where can you post it?  On a wall, in a laundry room, behind a door?
3.  How will you post it – dry erase board is the best, but a chalk board might be more aesthetically pleasing, even a large wall hanging calendar could act as a first step.
4. Give it a try! 

One of the key things I’ve found about visual boards is they take a lot of adjusting – so jump in, put something up and then keep tweaking it until you settle on something that works for you.

Along these lines, I suggest you keep your board pretty flexible until you settle on a final setup.  That means, don’t spend time affixing tape lines and laminating labels until you’re pretty sure that is what you want.  My board had all written labels and lines for at least six months.  Here you can see the stages of development:

         

             

Remember PLAN-DO-CHECK-ADJUST.

Some additional resources:

• I’ve noticed Target has quite a few attractive board options – so you can check there for supplies along with a Staples or Office Depot.
• Here is a link to a pretty good visual management blog: http://www.xqa.com.ar/visualmanagement/

Good luck!  Let me know how your experiments go and include photos if you can!