Family dinners are hard for 2 working parents to coordinate. My husband and I finally found a way to divide the work.

• With two working parents and four kids, mealtime is always a little hectic in our house.
• My husband and I have very different styles in the kitchen, so we try to keep our distance.
• We divide the work into manageable tasks, including planning and shopping, to suit our strengths.

I love my husband, but cooking together is not something our marriage can survive.

Things can admittedly get a little tricky at mealtime in our house. With two working parents and four kids, evenings are always hectic. Family dinners are very important to us, and we do everything we can to make sure all six of us are around the table for quality time as much as possible.

The issue arises that my husband and I are very different. I am highly organized, yet I never follow a recipe to a T. My husband is analytical, and he meticulously follows every recipe step by step.

Accomplishing the family dinner task was a marital nightmare until we decided to divide and conquer our own tasks rather than work together on single tasks until they were done.

I'm the planner

I plan all our family's meals. I came up with the idea of a meal rotation schedule after a long family meeting about dietary preferences and recipe likes and dislikes. Now I have a four-week meal plan that takes all the guesswork out of the age-old question, "What are we having for dinner?"

I also decided we would aim to cook four to five times a week, sometimes eating the same meal two nights in a row to make things a little easier on us. On weekends, we will usually plan to make a meal on Friday night for dinner, then the leftovers for lunch on Saturday. These ideas aren't groundbreaking, but having them set as part of our overall plan for the week means we're more likely to stick to them.

My husband does all the grocery shopping

Believe it or not, my husband enjoys the routine of grocery shopping. Not me. I can't stand the hustle and bustle. The lights are too bright, and people seem to have no problem getting into my personal space. My husband pops in his earbuds and happily shops for our groceries once a week. Finding the right groceries is like a treasure hunt for him, he tells me

He comes home with bags and bags of groceries for the six of us, and the kids help put everything away after thoroughly investigating the haul first.

Our kids are our cooking assistants

Every parent knows how hard it is, at the end of a long day, to make a meal, even when it's been carefully planned, and the groceries are in the fridge. To help with this, all of our kids have one or two "food helper" nights where they set the table, get out condiments, and help prep food, such as chopping veggies or firing up the oven.

Perhaps it's stereotypical, but I hate when my husband is in the way in the kitchen. When he's cooking, I'm not in the space. When I'm cooking, I kick him out. Keeping this space allows us not to get in each other's way or on each other's nerves and allows us each a chance for some one-on-one time with one of our kids.

This system works for us

We aren't able to sit down to family dinners every night. One of my teens has a job and sometimes works until mid-evening. Two of my kids are in sports, so there are games, practices, and matches to work around. Sometimes hubby works late, or one of us is running the kids to work or practices during a typical dinnertime. We manage to eat as a family two to three times a week.

Dividing the jobs of planning, buying groceries, and prepping dinner so they don't always fall on the same person has made evenings a lot less stressful and more enjoyable in our house. That way, we can get to the good stuff like talking about our day or week, sharing "tea," and disengaging from the outside world and its demands.