'I hired someone to shop and meal prep for my family of four. It's cheaper than you would think.'

The fantasy is you're that organised mum who spends Sunday afternoons gracefully chopping vegetables, portioning out perfectly balanced meals into glass containers, and updating your meal planning app as your children play quietly nearby.

The reality? It's 9pm on Sunday, you've just finished three loads of washing, helped with a last-minute school project about dinosaurs (why is it always dinosaurs?), and you're staring into your fridge wondering how you're going to feed everyone tomorrow. Again.

Sound familiar?

Watch: How to make 21 meals for $70. Post continues after video.

You're not alone in this chaotic juggling act.

Between morning meltdowns over mismatched socks, back-to-back Zoom calls, school pick-ups and the never-ending question of "What's for dinner?", finding time to meal prep can feel like trying to solve a Rubik's cube while riding a unicycle.

The mental load is real. But here's the thing: maybe, just maybe, there is a way to make meal prep work for actual life.

One mother thinks she's found the answer.

'I loved cooking, but it was the mental load.'

Juggling a full-time job and a side hustle, mum-of-two Gabriella Lizzo quickly found herself with little time or energy to cook healthy family meals.

"I loved cooking, but it was the mental load. The mental load of working, the mental load of being a mother, of having a clean house. Then the mental load of 'What are we going to eat?' but then going to get the groceries on top," she told Mamamia.

"The worst thing is coming home after work, trying to put the babies to sleep, and being like, 'Oh my god, what am I going to cook?', (only) to look in the fridge and realise you only have half of the ingredients for a meal.

"I do like to stay very busy, but sometimes life admin just has to fall away or be passed onto someone else if I want to be able to do my role as mum and worker and partner."

Gabriella tried to use meal subscription services to ease the burden, but found they didn't really work for her.

Gabriella is a mum of two who works full-time and juggles a side gig. Image: Supplied.

"The frozen meals, you order a fortnight in advance, so you're normally on a subscription of like, five meals or seven meals or 10 meals. Now, things come up and what I wanted a fortnight ago may not be the flavours I want this week. I would find they just sat there and (went) to waste. So, you're in the same predicament as you were when you (went) out to buy groceries and cook the meals yourself."

Undeterred, Gabriella vowed to find a solution to the food-prep conundrum, and turned to job-sharing platform Airtasker. She found multiple people willing to take on weekly meal preps for her.

And best of all?

It was cheaper and more flexible than anticipated.

Gabriella said while the cost varies week to week depending on her needs, four nights' worth of meals with freezable options recently came to $377, groceries included.

"It's 100 per cent cheaper than takeaway," she said. "If you order two or three Thai dishes and then you pay your delivery, you're at $80 anyway. If you do that three times a week, you're at pretty much the same amount, and this is healthier. It's home-cooked."

The menu Gabriella winds up with is healthier than your standard takeaway, too.

One recent week of food included meals of grilled barramundi with baby potatoes and beans, minestrone with lentils and focaccia, cauliflower and tofu steaks with garlic carrots and a quinoa rice mix, and spinach and ricotta cannelloni.

Gabriella said the meals she gets prepped are healthier, and cheaper, than takeaway. Image: Supplied.

"It really depends on my needs. That's why I love it … I can say, 'This week I need three meals, next week I need five'," she said, adding that she's been using the app for about eight months. "It's been life-changing."

Gabriella is part of a growing trend.

New data released by Airtasker shows there's record demand for meal prepping, with an 80 per cent spike in posted tasks in February alone compared to 12 months ago.

Gabriella said she now enjoys the moments she has time to cook. "It's something we can do together as a family."

Feature image: Supplied.

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