It's that time of year again...the kids are back in school! While I normally say I don't want the summer to end, I'm grateful for things to slow down a bit. We had a fun filled, BUSY summer!
Every year I feel the need to do some sort of organizing before the kids go back to school. In the past I've set up homework stations or a study area, a space for them to store their backpacks and paperwork that needs signing. This year I chose to organize the kitchen and designate a lunch making space!
This past year school lunches were free due to the pandemic. The kids just grabbed lunch in the cafeteria every day (more out of laziness than anything else!). This year, we are going to do it a bit different.
Both kids complained about the quality of their school lunches. There were of course days they enjoyed what they ate, but I felt it was more complaining than not. They are both old enough to make their own lunches but I knew if I didn't have some sort of role in this process they'd be grabbing Poptarts for lunch!
So I reorganized a few cabinets and opened up some counter space in our kitchen to make a space for them to create their lunches each day.
First, I designated a drawer that has brown paper lunch bags and some Ziplocs for their sandwiches and snacks. I chose to go with the paper bags because if I send either of them to school with an actual lunch box I will probably never see it again!
Then, on the counter top we have a space with bread, sandwich rolls ( for my picky eater who doesn't like the crust on the bread), peanut butter, and some tuna packets. They both know there must be a sandwich of some sort in their lunch each day.
The cabinets above the sandwich making supplies contain snacks they can grab as sides to their sandwiches. Most of the ones in the cabinet are snacks that are not individually wrapped and need to go into a ziploc bag.
I put a white metal drawer system to the side of the cabinets as well. The top drawer holds their non refrigerated fruit options and their drink options along with additional snacks. You can never have too many snacks!!
Originally the only drink option was water but I got complaints about that before they even made their first lunch so I added some non water options with the rule they could only have ONE non water option per week. I only put out enough for them to indeed grab one and I store ( hide) the rest somewhere else.
Lastly, there is a utensil caddy sitting on the counter that contains the obvious (utensils), but also holds markers so that they can label their lunch bags.
That's it! That completes my tour of our lunch station. We are only on the second day of school but so far everything has gone smoothly. Now if only I didn't have to remind them to grab their lunches out of the fridge each morning😂
