We are well and truly into the swing of things with this back to school business. The novelty of a new school bag and hair clip has almost been replaced by a sense of routine now. Chances are you made quite a bit of an effort with school lunches in that first week of school.

• Have you ever considered freezing sandwiches? It’s a very normal thing in plenty of families. All you need is a fresh loaf of bread and fillings like ham and cheese or peanut butter and jam. If you take twenty minutes out of your day at the weekend you can batch make sandwiches and freeze them in individual bags. Some parents do 2-3 weeks worth in one go and have a designated freezer drawer. Take them out in the morning and they will have thawed out by lunch-time.
• Make a little snack station in the fridge or drawers and allow the kids to choose two items from it every morning. It’s their job to pick them out and pop them in their lunch box. Cheese strings, yoghurts, packets of raisins, carrot sticks and crackers work really well.
• We know you’ve heard this one before but making lunches at night time rather than in the morning really makes a big difference. Think about that twenty minutes while the pasta is boiling for dinner or while you are waiting for the washing machine to finish it’s spin. You could box up all of your children’s lunches. It makes sense as you are pottering around any way and the reality is that energy and motivation is a lot lower in the early hours of the morning when you have a million other things to do.
• Pick up lunch boxes that have separate compartments. It allows things to go further. One packet of cheesy mini crackers can be divided out among three lunch boxes for example. You can also justify saving little handfuls of dinner leftovers because they can be added to one of the sections. Cold pasta, roasted vegetables, boiled eggs and meats work really well.
• If you run out of bread try skewers instead of sandwiches. You can add ham, cheese, grapes and raw vegetables for a colourful and fun surprise. You should be able to pick up plastic skewers with relative ease.
• If you have children at home and children at school why not also pack a lunch for the kids who stay at home with you? What’s another lunch box eh? It will save you time later in the day so that you can get other things done or just sit down and enjoy your own lunch. Better still – pack yourself a little lunch too while you are on a roll.
• Less is sometimes more. Is your child’s lunch box forever returning home half filled with snacks that have been opened and now have to be thrown out? Maybe they simply do not need as much. Pack a little less and find the quantity that works well for you. A bit of research will save you time and money in the long run.