I have to figure out a budget and enforce it, regardless of who gets upset.
My mother had a two week menu that she cycled my entire childhood, with a couple of seasonal variations, a couple of "once a year" things, and the occasional addition or subtraction. By the time I was twelve I thought it a nightmare, but no one else seemed to care.
The blander aspects I can still eat and enjoy, but macaroni and tuna fish once a week meant I don't eat tuna fish to this day.
I don't go so far as my mom in the "eat what I cook or starve" department, but my general rule is eat what I cook or make something yourself. For little ones I had a short list of options I'd make if necessary -- store brand cereal, pb&j, fried or scrambled eggs, left overs, sometimes cottage cheese with fruit or string cheese or whatever. When my kids got older they learned to cook simple things for themselves -- grilled cheese and canned tomato soup, oatmeal, etc.
But I will say, whether you go my mom's "Tuesday we eat this" or my "something different every day of the year" route, writing out menus ahead of time is key if you want to be eating home more often. So is keeping some stuff in the pantry or the freezer that's quick and easy, be it canned chow mein and noodles from Chung King, or a bunch of frozen stuff from the Quick Cooking cookbook you whipped up some Saturday. My mom writes menus with assigned days; I just write down some lunch or dinner meal menus and make sure I have the ingredients on hand, then decide as I go what I'll cook when (which sometimes means having hubby pick up the fresh veggies later in the week for some thing).
We do have some food traditions, like muffins on Tuesday or pancakes on Friday, where I can fall back on old standards if I don't feel like trying something different. And sometimes I do a mix of both -- the old standards for the kids and something different but on the same theme for hubby and I -- but that's only practical if you've got a large enough family you'd be doing multiple batches of whatever anyhow.
Keeping the super-easy stuff in pantry or freezer is probably more important than the menu for getting away from eating out, especially if you're prone to the "I don't know what to cook; let's eat out" or the "I can't face cooking today; let's eat out" thing. Hubby at one point was adamantly opposed to buying anything processed, partly because he preferred things from scratch but mostly because he felt they were a waste of money. Came a point when the kids were little where no way could I keep up with entirely scratch cooking, and once he realized it was either processed stuff or eating out, and crunched the numbers on
those relative costs (instead of from scratch versus processed) he suddenly was gung ho for the occasional frozen burritos and canned chow mein.
