Meal planning saves money. And it is the one thing I am absolute rubbish at. One reason is because I still haven't accepted that I'm a grown up now. I have a child, a career, a mortgage. I'm chair of the PTA. But still, inside, I think I'm going to go to all night raves and sleep till noon.

Having forked out on a takeaways for four nights last week, for the adults in the household, I realised I might as well be standing on the street corner handing out my cash to passersby.

Somehow it is always easier to throw together a meal for my son from scratch. Partly because I don't worry about its contents so much during the week as he gets a lovely fully cooked school dinner at lunchtime. But not so easy to co-ordinate things for the adults, since we all eat at different times. My other half works lates during the summer, so I have a choice of eating with him, or with son. And most of the time I do neither and just have a piece of toast.

Sound familiar?

I made it my mission then to find out exactly how you can make meal planning easy.