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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Diana Rene: 0:49

Welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast. We are going to talk about school lunches today and, just a disclaimer, we are going to be talking about packing school lunches and how we can make it easier for ourselves all throughout the year. But this can also be for you, even if you don't have kids in school, whether they're just too little because they're not going to school, because they're just too little, or because they're homeschooling or for whatever reason. If you have kids at home, this also applies to you. It can still help save you time, money and energy. So I just wanted to kind of preface this entire episode with that, because it's not only for kids who are going to school. So I'm curious how you feel when you start thinking about another year of packing lunches. If you are like most, you probably dread it or you may enjoy doing it for like the first couple of weeks, but after that it feels just like a major chore. It feels like another thing you have to do, constantly thinking about what to pack, finding the time to pack it, making sure it's something that your kids are going to eat. It just feels stressful, especially because it's something that has to be done five days a week for most of the year, because kids are in school for most of the year, right? So I want to talk today about how to simplify school lunches so that they just don't feel as stressful and they take up the least amount of time as possible.

Diana Rene: 2:23

So the very first thing to simplify school lunches is to meal plan for lunches and oh my gosh, you are probably rolling your eyes because you're like Diana, I don't even like meal planning for dinners. You want me to do it for school lunches now too. But hear me out, because if you know exactly what you're going to pack, at least for the main portion of the lunch for the whole month, you will instantly feel less stressed and know exactly what to buy for lunches that week. When you do the grocery order, I love doing a monthly rotation so I build out months worth of school lunches and then at the end of the month I just repeat it. And then at the end of the month I just repeat it. This isn't really something that kids get sick of, because a full month in between the same lunch item isn't a long time. It's not something like where even weekly or they're getting the same thing multiple times a week. So that is really helpful.

Diana Rene: 3:20

But if the idea of mapping out and planning a full month's worth of lunches feels really overwhelming to you, then you can also just focus on like the main portion or the like protein of the lunch and at least plan that out so you know what to buy when it comes to like the bulk of what is going to help nourish them while they are at school, and then the rest of it you can kind of supplement with whatever you have at home for leftovers or whatever fruits and veggies you bought that week for the grocery store, but at least knowing what the main portion of the lunch is going to be. It just takes a lot of the extra mental fatigue and it's yet another decision that you have to think of as a busy mom. When we can just kind of eliminate those extra decisions, then you're just better off. Your stress levels are lower. I mean, I don't have to convince you of that, right? You know that. So there's really no wrong or right way, it's just whatever works best for you, and I think some people really thrive with exact rigid plans and others thrive with loose guidelines and lots of flexibility. So You're going to have to kind of experiment with that and see what works best for you. But to get you started, I did make a one-week lunch plan for you with a shopping list included, and you can grab that free in the show notes. We have it linked in the show notes for you just to kind of get the ball rolling and maybe for the first week of school you at least know you have a plan that you could use for your kids too.

Diana Rene: 4:56

So the second thing to simplify school lunches is to prep. On Sundays you can wash and cut any of the produce needed throughout the week and you can store it in the fridge ready to go. Okay, so my phone alarm just went off and normally we would edit that out. I'm going to leave it in because it was actually an alarm telling me to put my grocery order in. So it feels really fitting. It feels really fitting for this episode and we are going to leave it in because I am right in the trenches with you and I need those reminders sometimes.

Diana Rene: 5:28

So, prepping on Sundays I want you to get your kids involved. Depending on their ages, you can put them in charge of washing the fruits and vegetables each week and then you chop, or they wash and chop under your supervision, obviously with kid-friendly knives, again, depending on their age and ability. But here's the thing you got to remember that kids want to be helpful. They think being in the kitchen with you is fun and if you are able to just let go a little bit of things being done, exactly perfect or exactly how you would do them or how you want them, letting your kids be involved and take ownership does so many things for everyone involved, okay. So I really want you to think about how you can get your kids involved in the prepping to make everything easier for the week.

Diana Rene: 6:23

Third, have a lunch center in your kitchen. This can be one shelf on a cabinet, it could be a bin that you pull out of your pantry every time you make lunch, but it's basically one spot that you keep all of the lunch supplies lunch boxes, lunch notes, food picks, napkins for lunch. Just think through everything that you would normally put in your kid's lunchbox and keep as many of those items as you can hopefully all of them to just make it easier on yourself when packing lunches. That way you're not going from one side of the kitchen to the other trying to find the food pick, going back, finding the lunchbox oh shoot, I need to go over here and grab the napkin If we can just have it all in one spot. It sounds silly because you're like Diana, it's the kitchen. It's okay, I'll figure it out. Yes, you will, but if we can cut down on the amount of time or energy that you're spending on finding where all of the other things that you need for lunches are, you're going to be better off, it's going to be easier and it's going to be less stressful when you're actually packing the lunches. The only thing in her kitchen that is not in the designated lunch center are the ice packs, because those obviously need to be kept in the freezer. The designated lunch center are the ice packs, because those obviously need to be kept in the freezer.

Diana Rene: 7:38

Okay, let's talk about the fourth thing you can do. You can pack lunches the night before. I have been doing this for six years now and we have never had an issue with food tasting weird or bad. Obviously, please store the packed lunch boxes in the fridge if it has food that needs to be refrigerated. But this is a common thing where, if anytime I've mentioned it in the past, people are like oh, but like the sandwich is going to get gross. Well, I don't know, like anytime my kids have had sandwiches that have been packed the night before they eat them and they don't mention anything about it. And so I think maybe we put our own preconceived ideas and it limits us and makes us pack lunches in the mornings, when mornings tend to just be a very stressful time.

Diana Rene: 8:27

No matter what you put in place for your mornings, you're more likely to have like a time crunch in the mornings and a higher just stress level or adrenaline level. It just helps so much. So I pack the lunches, I put them in the fridge and in the morning all I have to do is grab the lunches out of the fridge, pop the ice packs into the lunchbox. I buy really thin ice packs and then I put one at the bottom, I put the lunch contents in and then I put another ice pack on the top and then I zip it and it's ready to go. It's super easy. If you can get your kids involved with packing lunches, again great. One option is to plan the main portion of the lunch and pack that and then let your kids add the fruit vegetables snack of choice from bins that you have preset, anything like that. But again, you guys, there's no wrong answers here. Try some of the things out and see what works best for you and your family, because what works really well for one family probably isn't going to work for another family. So you kind of have to just like test and see what's working well for you and your family.

Diana Rene: 9:36

For us, most of the time I am packing lunches because I'm packing lunches while my girls are getting ready for bed and they're doing other things that are preparing them for the day ahead, like they're setting, they're going through their backpacks and making sure that those are ready to go for the next day and just being ready for bed and making sure everything is done, so that's the time for me to be able to pack the lunches. We've had seasons and there, even when I primarily pack lunches or my husband packs lunches, there have been times where the girls have wanted to pack their lunch. We say, sure, go ahead. Or I'll say, hey, miss Ten, can you please pack lunches tomorrow, because I'm doing something extra that I have to focus on and it just works better because she's available and it works. So there's no like. If you decide that you're going to pack lunches, it doesn't have to be like that every single day of your life. You can be flexible, but having just a simple like cadence for it or an idea of who's packing and when is going to help you.

Diana Rene: 10:40

The fifth thing you can do to simplify is you can do, if you want to do, notes for your kids, like little love notes that you put in their lunches, pre-write as many of these as you can. So you can go on Amazon and you can order school lunch notes from all different types of sellers that do all different types of notes. They can be like funny jokes or inspirational quotes or just even like pretty art you name it. You can probably find it, because these notes have become very popular Even in the last couple of years. There are so many more choices than there were even like three or four years ago. So what I do is I like to order a selection of these. I like to order some funny jokes, I like to order like motivational things, and like to order like motivational things and then also just like cute things that I know the girls will like. So I order those, I grab a pen and my favorite snack and I sit down to a mindless TV show that I don't really like, have to pay super close attention to, and I just knock a ton of them out at the beginning of the year.

Diana Rene: 11:43

I write kind things, I write encouraging things. I write kind things, I write encouraging things, I write motivational things, I write loving things, and I leave the name off and then I put them in a bin that goes into the lunch center. That way, when I'm packing the lunch the night before, I just grab one of them and I add their name to the top and I pop it into the lunchbox. I do always make sure to leave a bunch of these blank, though, because if one of my girls is going through something specific like maybe they're having drama with a friend, you know, something like that or they're nervous for a test, or they're having a really hard time with, like, separation anxiety, anything like that separation anxiety, anything like that that way I can customize the note for their specific situation and so, again, most of the time I'm popping in one of those pre-written notes it's still a love note, I still wrote it, I just did it earlier in batch but there are times where they're going through something that I want to make sure I write something very specific to them, and so I will always keep blank ones for those situations. And sixth, so this one is a little bit less of like a simplification and more of just pleading to you to make sure you're being food safe.

Diana Rene: 13:02

I see so many hacks right when school year starts on TikTok and Instagram. Things like air frying chicken nuggets in the morning and then putting them into a lunchbox for your child to eat four or five hours later at their lunch period. You guys, this is dangerous and can seriously harm your child, because food needs to be kept at proper temperatures to not grow harmful bacteria and cause food poisoning. To be kept at proper temperatures to not grow harmful bacteria and cause food poisoning. So if you really want to put warm or hot food in your kids' lunches, use a thermos, but also make sure you're using it properly. If you aren't sure if the thermos keeps the food hot long enough, try a test round at home Cook the food, place it in the thermos, put it in the lunch bag with the ice packs for the cold food and then take it out. However many hours later your kid's lunch would be and temp the food. You're likely going to be very surprised at the temps. So that's just something every year that drives me crazy.

Diana Rene: 14:03

When I see all of these TikToks and moms, they're like, oh my gosh, that's such a good idea. I'm going to do this too. I've seen people ask like well, like, is it still warm by the time the kids eat it? And someone will be like no, not really. But they've never complained that. Like a food preference is very different than not having a safe food for your child, and I know nobody is purposely harming their child by doing this, but I just don't think a lot of people know the potential harm that could happen by doing that and how risky it truly is to be giving food to kids four or five hours later that has not been held at proper temperature. So I just had to put that out there, because it drives me crazy every single year when I see all of these hacks.

Diana Rene: 14:51

All right, so before we jump off this episode, I just want to go back again. Why is this helpful if you don't have kids in school? Because even if your kids are not in school, you're still busy, right, and like lunchtime rolls around, people are tired, there's lots of tears, you're feeling overwhelmed. If you can just grab the lunches out of the fridge that have already been made and they can start eating, it's going to greatly help and decrease those stress levels, and so it's something I have done for many, many years. Even before my oldest went to school, I would try and pre-pack lunches as much as I could, and that may be also now that it just like popped into my brain that maybe that helped them to be like fine with cold, hot lunches. Cold hot lunches oh my goodness, cold school lunches when they're at school. Because we did that a lot at home. It wasn't every day, but we did that a lot, and so I just think it's helpful in either situation. I really hope that these are helpful for you.

Diana Rene: 15:54

If you have any other tips that you'd like to share, I would love to hear them, and I'm always open to new ideas and I love sharing other ideas that people send to me, and if this is helpful, let me know. Send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your instagram stories. And if you're on instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a dm to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.