Even though “Back to school” has just started, you might have already started hitting a wall when it comes to packing your kid’s lunches every. single. day! It might feel like you need to have the ability to look into the future, to see what your child might want to eat that day, that’s completely different from what they liked the day before. You might also feel anxious or frustrated when they bring a half-eaten lunch home every day and you’re concerned they’re not eating enough.
We have experienced some, if not all of these situations over the years, and as your friends and neighbors here at HighPoint Apartments, we’re here to tell you that there are some great tips and tricks to help you pack those daily lunches with a smile on your face.
The first thing we would like to share is that there is no need to overthink this! We know it’s difficult when you see all of those fancy lunches on Pinterest but that’s not everyday reality for most people. Just stick to the basic formula which includes packing protein, veggie, fruit, and carb. This ensures that your child gets a healthy and balanced diet which is what’s most important.
The next tip involves planning a lunch of the week, which can be modified into different meals. This can include getting one particular kind of lunch meat or making chicken salad and then creating a different meal with it, using different kinds of bread or wraps. All that’s left is to add some fruit and veggies!
Another great tip to help make packing school lunches stress-free is by doing most of the packing the night before. While dinner is cooking on the stove, put together lunches and leave them in the fridge to keep them fresh, so it’s as simple as grabbing it in the morning on your way out the door.
For those of you who don’t know this already, bento-style boxes are your best friend when it comes to packing school lunches. The different compartments make it easy to keep food separated without having to pack half of your Tupperware for lunches. It also means that you can unwrap most of the snacks, allowing your child to have more time to eat without having to struggle with multiple wrappers.
If like me, you enjoy buying snacks for school lunches in bulk, you also know that it can be messy and stressful trying to portion the right amount of trail mix, when rushing to pack lunches. So it might be helpful to portion and bag snacks at the beginning of the week or even after going shopping so that you can simply grab a prepackaged snack to put in their lunch bag.
