I make my son's lunch each day and try to be organized enough to bring my own as well. Sometimes I succeed. Usually when I plan ahead and do as much lunch prep as possible on the weekend right after doing my grocery shopping.
These are some of the things I do to make evening (or morning if I am really lazy) lunch prep that much easier:
DS's lunch
- Put all dry snacks into a basket in my pantry - remove all outer packaging. Cracker/cheese packs, granola bars, etc..
- Put things like chips or crackers from larger packages into little snack sized snack bags - prep enough for the week - add to dry snack basket.
- Take yogurt tubes, cheese sticks, etc...out of their outer packaging and place in basket in fridge.
- We have 3 plastic juice boxes that I send juice in for him (he gets one a day) - prefill them all - wash as they get used and refill and store in fridge.
- Wash all the apples I will need for the week so that I can just grab and add to lunchbox.
- If using yogurt from large container or jello - put into small tupperware type container and store in fridge snack basket.
- My son doesn't like sanwiches - he takes deli meat plain in a bag - I prepackage snack bags with 3 pcs deli meat in each.
- Muffins get put into baggies and stored in the fridge basket.
So I just have to grab any of the prepped snacks and food and pop them into his lunchbox with an icepack and we are off!
My lunch - salad:
- Boil eggs on the weekend.
- Wash, cut up and bag celery and baby carrots.
- Put salad dressing into little tupperware type containers.
- Put cottage cheese in little tupperwares.
- Put bacon bits & croutons in snack bags.
- Cut up cheese and olives and put into snack bags.
- Wash and dry lettuce - bag in 2 cup portions - enough for week.
- Wash apples.
Then I grab one of each that I have just prepped and place all into a large ziplock bag and store in the fridge. Each morning I just need to grab the bag and put it into my lunchbox with an icepack.
Works for me (when I do it!). For more great tips, pop over to Rocks in My Dryer.
5 comments:
I need to organize lunch and your post helped a bunch! Thanks for sharing what works for you.
Great tips... sometimes, the things that make the most sense seem to be the hardest things to think of! Thanks for sharing these tips! I'll make very good use of them.
Great tips. And thanks for your comment on my blog. I am a former tech writer...now staying at home.
I love your idea of using baskets for the snacks. I buy enough snacks to last for a week's worth of lunches and, if I'm not watchful, my girls see all the new boxes of stuff on grocery day and motor through the stuff after school. This way, I can take out what's necessary for their lunches first and they can have the remaining stuff for afterschool snacks.
I'm also going to buy more juice boxes so I can prepare them ahead of time.
Thanks for the useful tips!!
I am so impressed...I just don't know if I have it in me to be all proactive and stuff..:))
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