Back to School Organization: Create a Lunch Station

Working parents with school-aged kids understand the utter chaos that a school-day morning can bring. Along with readying yourself for work and making sure everyone eats a decent breakfast, there is school lunch preparation to consider.

Creating a lunch station is one way to deal with this, both for older kids who make their own lunches or for busy parents who need to make lunches on the fly on an all-too-busy morning.

Refrigerator Organization

Any basket or bin that is large enough to hold all the refrigerated lunch fixings is fine. In it, you’ll place fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, lunch meats, jam, and the spreads for the bread.

If you pre-make sandwich salads, such as chicken, tuna or egg, place the container holding the salad in the basket as well. Label it so the family can figure out what’s inside.

Dry Ingredients Get the Same Treatment

Whatever implements you use to make school lunches should go in one basket. Items like sandwich cutters, apple slicers and spreading knives should go in this one.

In a larger basket, you’ll place all the dry ingredients necessary to create a yummy sandwich. This includes bread or sandwich rolls, peanut butter and the sides, such as crackers, fruit snacks, cookies, and chips.

Try This Alternative

Included a basket for “gear,” such as lunch boxes, plastic containers, and bags, a basket for bread, and two more for the sides, one labeled “sweet,” and the other “salty.”

Attach some squares of corkboard to the inside of the cabinet. Tacked up the school lunch menu, with red circles around the days the kids will be eating school-provided lunches (these are days you may want to encourage!).

Let’s face it; those crack-of-dawn lunch-making sessions aren’t the best part of the day. Including some of these organizing tips, however, will make the routine a lot more tolerable.