When it comes to packing lunches, I’m all about keeping it simple. I’d much rather get into an easy routine that guarantees that a lunch will actually get made, than over-complicate the process and burn out two weeks into the school year.
After over a decade of packing lunches for kids, I’ve come up with a few ways to make packing nutritious lunches fast and easy. Hopefully these tips will help you as you’re gearing up for lunch-packing season!
1) Keep a supply of healthy “fillers” on hand – and make sure everyone knows they’re for lunches only. In an out-of-reach cabinet high above the fridge, I keep a box that stores all our lunch “sides”: granola bars, whole-wheat crackers, fruit squeezes, pretty much anything that doesn’t have to be stored in the fridge or made that day. My kids know that the basket is for lunches only – hands off! That way I can keep tabs on inventory and make sure there’s always enough on hand.
2) Shop sales and stock up. Instead of replenishing lunch supplies every week during my regular supermarket trip, I wait until our favorite items go on sale and stock up. That way I can splurge on the healthier versions of some snacks (like the cereal bars that don’t contain high-fructose corn syrup) without making a big dent in my grocery budget.
3) Opt for packaged versions of healthy foods. Fruit harvested and packaged fresh off the tree is still packed with vitamins and fiber, and can sometimes even be more nutritious than that imported apple that’s been lingering in the fruit bowl for a week.
My kids mostly take leftovers for lunch, but we do keep a bin of packaged “treats” (granola bars, applesauce squeezers etc) for last minute lunches. Every once in a while I also try to make big batches of homemade muffins to freeze — I use healthy ingredients that I feel good about my kids having (carrots, zucchini, pumpkin etc), and they thaw in time for lunch.
Just a reminder to parents to read labels…those “sugar free” fruit cups contain sucralose (aka Splenda, an artificial sweetener).
Thanks for pointing that out, Shannon. I usually opt for the light syrup or juice-only packed fruit cups, because I don’t like the kids to have artificial sweeteners. But I know some parents are more worried about sugar itself.
Curious: do your kids ever pack their own lunches? And if so, is it helpful, another case of “easier to do it yourself”?
I don’t as my daughter has a super sweet tooth and I know EXACTLY what would land in the lunchbox each day…I do have a friend that does though, and she said that it made her mornings so much more enjoyable. No more fighting for her!
My older two are pretty much in charge of packing or acquiring their own lunches. There are healthy snacks at home they can grab on their way out the door, so sometimes they’ll grab a granola bar and a piece of fruit and then buy milk at school. Sometimes they get the hot lunch. I don’t oversee it too closely with them (going into 8th and 10th grades.) But they do have a limit of the amount of money they’re allowed to charge to their lunch accounts, which keeps them from going too crazy with snacks.
The younger two boys help make sandwiches and pick out their snacks, but usually I oversee the packing. I don’t feel like handing the task over to them would simplify my life much at this point – I’d still have to police the snack basket, make sure they remembered their lunches in the morning, etc. We use lunch-packing time as an opportunity to chat about their days, etc. I tend to pack right when they come home from school because I have more energy and it fits really well into that little slot of time.