I wish I was the mom who let my kids have school lunches. I have seen the school lunches and I am glad they are there as an option for some kids but my kids will not be eating them. Maybe on a rare occasion I do let them have it, but not usually. I can’t let Aj have school lunch for he gets really stuck in a routine so if he has it one week he will want it that same day next week, and so on and so forth.
This means every night of the week I am to make a new lunch for my kids. I try to spruce things up but overall they end up with similar lunches each week. I usually try to sneak in a healthy option of cucumbers or sliced peppers or something for the little man because I am determined to get that kid to like more food options besides unhealthy ones.
After a long day of work at home, picking up kids and dealing with homework. The last thing I want to do is pack up a lunch. Sure, I have been making uncrustables from home on the weekends. It helps alleviate some time. I also slice up green or red peppers to place in sandwich bags for quick toss into the lunch boxes but that doesn’t alleviate the time needed to clean each of the three kids lunch boxes out and pack it all up for the next day.
This is where chore ideas are coming in. I need my three kids to get back on track with chores. I think their new responsibility will be to empty and clean out their own lunch boxes. Why not? They are 5, 7 and 11 plenty old enough for that task and as I have sunk into this life I am currently living, I have started to lose some of myself and that includes making kids do some chores. We are a family and the kids have always had responsibilities but I got sucked into where I am now and they have fallen backwards along with me. It’s time to start assigning lunch box cleaning to the kids.
I think the best way to alleviate the chore list for mom is to encourage more involvement from the kids! At age 2 the kids are plenty old enough to start having small tasks to do around the house. I have always explained chores to my kids like this, “we are a family and as such, we are to each do a small part to help each other lead a funner day. If we each have a task to do, that alleviates it from Mom’s hands and in turn creates more time for us to spend together having fun!”
Wish me luck …. it’s never easy to get kids BACK into chores after slacking for over a year!
Wishing you luck! I’ve never thought to have the kids make their own lunch, I bet they’d like it. 🙂