How to streamline your kids school lunches

If you are like most families you start off the school year strong. Your kids sandwiches have actual meat and cheese in them, maybe even with some gourmet mayo. Of course there’s a healthy piece of fruit in there as well an organic juice or milk box. Top that off with a homemade sweet treat and boom! You know your kids are off to school with a healthy, well balanced meal. (except we all know they toss the fruit…am I right? 😉 ). Fast forward a few months weeks and lunches might look a bit different…maybe there’s some random left overs a capri sun and a baggie of grapes. End of the year?? Please! At this point if you have to think of ONE.MORE.LUNCH.IDEA you will lose your mind! Your kid ends up with a carrot stick (unpeeled) and a decade old twinkie (you know those things last forever right?). I too, have struggled with school lunches….here’s how I broke the cycle and figured out how to streamline my kids school lunches……………………………………..I know me and therefore I know better than to even start with all that organic, gourmet, homemade stuff. Instead I’ve put together a cabinet (and a couple of bins in the fridge) full of stuff I know my kids will eat. Now, this stuff may not make it into any magazines about healthy kids eating but nor do I think it will rot their brains. 🙂

The lower shelf includes drinks and the healthier stuff. While inventory changes, I typically always have fruit cups, GoGo Squeezes, granola bars and some kind of dried fruit available (as well as yogurts and cheese sticks in the fridge). Middle shelf houses the junkier stuff. Chips, crackers, cookie pouches and often some type of fruit snacks. Don’t mind the top shelf, that’s where our S’mores box lives as well as extra plastic cutlery.

My kids know they have to play off this formula….

My kids don’t always make their own lunches, I often do it right when they get home from school. But we all follow the basic formula shown above. One main thing (sandwich, left-overs, lunchable). Once healthy thing (yogurt, applesauce). One salty thing (this doesn’t always make it in, but if it does they can choose from chips or crackers). One sweet thing (cookies, fruit snack) and one drink (water, milk juice). I’ve included a reminder to grab a fork or spoon as needed.

Also shown is our breakfast options. They have to choose atleast one of the healthy items and then can have a junky if they want.

We’ve used the system for over a year now and love it! Seriously just grab one item from each category, toss them in the lunchbox and done!

This school year I wanted to be able to include a few new things in our lunch cabinet rotation so we had a “taste test”. I diced up or otherwise portioned out little bits of a number of things my kids  had not tried before.

Our tasting plate included:

• Parmesan cheese cubes
• mozzarella cheese sticks
• sausage and pancake breakfast bites
• mango applesauce (gogo squeeze)
• strawberry yogurt (from a squeeze pouch we’d not tried before)
• apple chips
• craisins (strawberry lemonade flavor)
• Lara bar (chocolate chip cookie dough flavor)
• Nutrigrain bar
• an all fruit strawberry bar

Sofia liked everything but the Lara bar and the all fruit strawberry bar. Joshua liked everything but the sausage pancake thing, the Lara bar and the all fruit strawberry bar. Sofia was very surprised she liked the mango applesauce as she typically hates applesauce. Joshua was surprised that the craisins were tasty. All in all we were able to add 8 new items to our lunch options.

How do you manage your kids school lunches? I hope you’ve been inspired to streamline your kids school lunches 🙂