It’s my favorite part of back to school, but can also be one of the most stressful parts of back to school… packing lunches and snacks. While we saw our share of lunches and snack times during summer, back to school lunches and snacks are just different, right?
Getting anything together on school mornings adds a level of frustration and stress, so the better prepared you are for it all, the smoother school mornings go.
This definitely includes snacks and school lunches so today I’m sharing my top 5 tips with you to build a better snack station for kids.
Keep your snack cabinet organized.
Organization, especially in the kitchen, just makes my heart and eyes happy. It’s one room in the house where I like things to be kept up and clean. It’s much easier to see when you’re running out of a particular snack and when things to need to be replaced.
It’s also much easier for kids to see all their available lunch and snack choices making mornings and even after school snack times smoother.
Snacks aren’t just for the pantry, create an organized snack section in your refrigerator.
While cabinets are usually a pretty easy place to keep organized in our house, the refrigerator is a different story. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re in a hurry to close that refrigerator door or what, but it can get to be a complicated, unorganized mess if we let it.
We recently replaced our old refrigerator with our current one just a few months ago and one of my favorite features when shopping for a new fridge was this snack drawer. I thought it would be a perfect place to keep the girls’ snacks tidy and organized.
Well, one large drawer doesn’t do much for organization on it’s own, but I just picked up 6 of these great organizers at a dollar store and they’ve been perfect for cold snack station organization.
Now things don’t slide around and there’s a spot for everything. It’s also very easy to see when things need to be re-stocked too!
Stock up on favorite snacks when they’re on sale.
Aside from keeping your snack stations organized, the next most important part is making sure you have snacks… and lots of them.
My favorite time to fill up our snack cabinet and refrigerator drawer is during the sales at my local grocery store. I also like to buy in bulk at club stores.
Package bulk snacks in reusable containers.
While it’s much easier for the girls to take either pre-packaged snacks to school, they sometimes aren’t the most cost effective all of the time. They’re convenient, but you can make bulk snacks convenient too!
I’ve bought some great reusable containers so that they can make their own packaged snacks when I stock up on their favorite General Mills cereals. They love the easy open plastic containers that I found at a local dollar store and the reusable zip top bags are great options too.
I’ve found that it’s much easier to get out the door in the mornings if your snacks are already in containers and they can just grab what they need.
Get your kids involved.
When it comes to stocking a snack station, no one has better ideas than your own children. I like to involve my girls in just about every aspect. They help me grocery shop so I make sure and get snacks that they love. They also help organize and clean up the snack station so they know where everything goes as well.
And this year they’re going to be more involved with packing their own lunches, as well as picking out their school snacks. I feel like the more responsibilities they have in their daily tasks, the more prepared they’ll be as they grow older.