The one part that I could do without during school season is packing lunches for my kiddos. I am always searching for ways to make the process as easy as possible. When you have kids attending school, these 4 Surprisingly Easy Ways To Pack Lunches For Kids are sure to help smooth your morning routine out significantly. This helps tons if you have multiple kids heading out the door to catch the bus. Since you won’t be scrambling to throw together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you’ll have more time to fix a healthy breakfast, or simply put your makeup on before you head out to work for the day.
4 Surprisingly Easy Ways To Pack Lunches For Kids
1. Prep in advance
Each week take an hour to prep everything in advance. This means bagging chips or pretzels into lunch servings for grab and go ease. It also means cleaning veggies, fruit and slicing, chopping or dividing into portions. If your child takes dips for their vegetables of fruit, portion those out into serving sizes in advance. Have everything ready so it is a quick grab an item and toss into lunch box choice each morning instead of rushing to wash, prep, slice and portion every single day. This works great for: vegetables, fruit, cheese, pretzels, chips, crackers, dips, sauces, treats and even cubes of lunch meat for quick and easy packing.
2. Assembly line method
In the morning have one child go through lunch supplies in an assembly line method to build their lunch with ease. Create bins in your refrigerator and pantry with thins like drinks, snacks, prepped veggies and fruit and then the only thing you have to really assemble would be sandwiches or wraps if packing those.
3. Have kids take turns.
Assign your kids days each week they can be in charge of packing lunches. This way nobody gets bored with the chore, and everyone learns how to effectively assemble a healthy lunch. You can create a simple chart that shows what everyone needs that includes: drink, fruit, vegetable, snack, sandwich/wrap or whatever else is on the menu.
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4. Don’t give too many options
One of the biggest hassles when building lunches is the fact that kids take too much time choosing. Each week or month when you do your grocery shopping, make a list with minimal options. Yes, you want your kids to have variety, but too much variety makes it hard to choose what they pack. Give them 1-3 choices for each thing and stick with it during the week. This will keep them from lingering over packing their lunch box, and will help you to make sure everything is in budget in the process.
Packing lunch boxes is a fact of life for any family with children, and many singles or couples who work outside the home. Having an organized plan is the best and easiest way to pack lunches for kids. An hour once a week to prep lunch box staples will go much farther than rushing around each day trying to scramble up breakfast, lunch and backpacks on the way out the door.
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[…] to school means saying hello to busy morning breakfasts, school lunches and snacks yet […]