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A Hack on How to Pack your Preschooler’s Lunch
Posted by Jeff on April 5, 2008 150 views Comments (View Comments)Here is a little advice on keeping your morning stress to a minimum and your children happy.
Pack everyone’s lunches the night before. Ok, I know, I don’t have the energy to pack both kids lunches let alone my own. So what is a Daddy to do? Here are a few simple steps that my wife and I try to do, making our morning rush out of the house a little less chaotic.
After the kids are in bed find 15 minutes to just sit down and unwind from 15 hours of being awake, that assumes you are up at 6am and the kids are finally sleeping at 9pm. Yikes 15 hours of being awake and have you spent 1 minute for yourself? So like I suggest, take 15 minutes and grab a magazine or browse to DaddysToolbox.com (or visit our recipe and cooking blog at Two Tongues Up) and relax. Or maybe you like to take a warm bath or play a computer game or something. Don’t catch up on bills or house chores, find the time for YOU!
After the 15 minutes of solitude you’ll have to get packing those lunches. To save some time, and since our daycare doesn’t allow peanut products (Boo’s favorite was PB&J) we’ve started to buy pre-packaged cheese and crackers or chicken nuggets, called Lunchables, since that is one thing Boo likes for lunch. We also buy chicken nuggets from Perdue as you can bake a few of them for lunch and package up some for a quick grab ‘n go.
Other tricks:
Pack multiple day lunches at the same time. If you have the fridge space go ahead and pack 2 or 3 days of lunches. This will save you time over a few days because you don’t have to open the cabinet, pantry or fridge each night and find the foods for lunches. By having most of the food out on the counter you can spend about 10 minutes and pack 3 days of lunches, where it might take you 5 mins per night. That’s a pretty good timesaver!
Buy canned fruit not individual servings. We buy all of our fruit in cans or jars and then use small plastic Gladware containers to make lunch-sized portions. You can save a considerable amount of money when buying the can/jars versus the small individual packages. We do the same with applesauce, buy big, serve small.
String cheese is a winner in our household too. Not only is it yummy, but fun to peel strips of cheese and eat them. Also, added benefit, increases your child’s consumption of calcium.
Juice Boxes: We buy small juice boxes for the ease of tossing a box of juice in the lunch bag or box. Also handy if you need to quickly grab a drink on your way out the door. Bonus: no spilling in the lunch box.
Drinkable yogurt is another product we tend to buy a lot. It’s a good calcium booster, the kids love them, and it is like a treat to the kids.
No, no’s: We don’t usually send cookies or sweats in our kids lunches. Why? Kids don’t need these sweets at lunchtime. Luckily for us our kids tend to not like sweets.
Hopefully you’ll find some value in what I wrote. Also, just know that most parents are going through what we all think is “only happening to us”. Nope, again, MOST parents would rather sit down and relax after work and not have to make well balanced lunches for the next day.
