My latest attempt at adulting

I found a way to make dinner require one decision instead of 400, and I’m testing it for the next few weeks.

Because I’m gonna be honest, the question what do you want for dinner gets under my skin in a way that’s probably unfair to my husband.

By that point in the day, I’ve made decisions about clients, content, money, the business, the dogs, the house, and whatever else my anxious Type A brain decided needed a full contingency plan.

I would like one part of my life where I’m not in charge of figuring out what happens next.

Apparently, that part won’t be dinner.

If you follow me on social media, you already know I hate the entire food process.

Meal planning. Grocery shopping. Cooking. Figuring out how food can somehow be in the house and still not become dinner. Absolute absurdity.

My real goal is to make enough money to hire a private chef. Unfortunately, I only have a Splenda daddy, not a sugar daddy, so we’re not exactly rolling in the sugar over here.

Until the private chef money arrives, I’m trying to reduce the friction.

Because I don’t think I hate every part of cooking equally. I think I’m already using so much of my brain all day that choosing a meal from hundreds of saved recipes feels impossible by 5 p.m.

Give me unlimited options when I’m already tired and I’ll stare at all of them until DoorDash starts looking like the only reasonable adult choice.

So I’m making the decision smaller.

We gave every day of the week a theme.

Monday = wraps

Tuesday = casseroles

Wednesday = Mexican

Thursday = pizza

Friday = we go out

Saturday = soup

Sunday = pasta

Then I went through the hundreds of recipes I’ve saved on Instagram and TikTok and picked five for each theme.

Now, when Monday comes around, I’m choosing between five wraps. I’m not digging through every recipe I’ve ever saved or looking at 20 nearby restaurants while my husband waits for an answer and I become increasingly irritated that dinner is a recurring human need.

There’s still a decision. It’s just focused.

The grocery list should get easier because we’ll keep rotating through a smaller group of simple meals. Cooking should take less work. Most importantly, I won’t have to invent dinner from scratch every damn day.

Sometimes the easiest way to protect your capacity is to stop making every decision from scratch.

Pick a category. Create a short rotation. Test it for a few weeks. And see whether it gives your brain a little room back.

It doesn’t have to be food, either. Look for the part of your day where a basic question keeps feeling much bigger than it should. That reaction may be telling you that the process has too many decisions for the capacity you have left.

Will this system finally turn me into someone who enjoys meal planning?

I highly doubt it.

But it might stop what do you want for dinner from becoming the final straw after a day full of decisions. And for now, I’ll take that.

I’ll report back once we know whether themed dinner nights have saved my remaining sanity or simply given me a more organized way to resent cooking.

And let me know if you do something similar for meal planning or anything else in your life. Would love to see where else I should apply this concept to.