After having three kids in school for the last ten years, one gets tired of making lunches. As a stay at home mom, I always felt it was my responsibility to make sure I made their lunches, until one day, I had enough. I was tired of making them so I started having my children make a weeks worth of lunches on Sunday nights with my supervision {I’m there but not helping at all unless asked.} This is how it works in my house: Each child {one at a time} will get 10 slices of bread and line them up. Now, two of my kids will take PB&J everyday so all they do is make 5 PB&J sandwiches, place them in individual sandwich bags and pop them in their designated freezer space. Yes, I said freezer space. Think of them as being “uncrustables” with the crust. By the time they have them for lunch, they are fully thawed and taste just fine. None of the kids have complained to date and I’ve done it this way for over a year. However, my youngest isn’t that fond of PB&J and didn’t want to take those for lunch. I got her a little thermos so she can take soups, spaghetti’os, mac n’ cheese, etc…. but then I thought, why couldn’t we make her favorite sandwich ahead of time too? Her favorite sandwich is salami, cheese and mustard. That’s it. But, the catch, you can’t really put mustard on bread and have it taste good 5 days later, can you? I didn’t even want to try. SO…while I was out one day I saw little mustard packets and came up with my own idea.
We grabbed all our lunch supplies: cheese, salami, mustard packets, wax paper and 10 slices of bread. I had Gianna cut 5 small pieces of wax paper the width of the cheese. She placed one slice of cheese on the wax paper and flipped it over and placed her salami on top and flipped it over so all lunchmeat was covered {except the side of course}. She placed that in her sandwich bag. Then she added her two slices of bread and mustard packets. Then it was placed in a designated spot in the refrigerator. Now she has 5 ready to make sandwiches that she can easily prepare when she gets to lunch everyday. For all three to gather their lunch belongings, it took about an hour and it was the best hour of bonding I could have ever imagined.
What time saving tips do you have to make your school day mornings stress-free?
Hi! Visiting from our SITS Tribe.
I have two boys, so I know what it’s like to have to make lunches aside from the many other tasks us mommies have. I think it’s a great idea to make them for the week, I could imagine how much time it saves. I will definitely be trying the homemade lunchables with my boys, such an awesome idea. Looking forward to reading more awesome posts from you! 🙂
What a fantastic idea!!!