How to Prep a Week’s Worth of Healthy School Lunches

Ready for some meal prepping? You want your kids to eat healthy and feel nourished during the week, but let’s face it, life gets super busy. Do yourself a favor and plan one afternoon to prep for the whole week. You will save time and stress later, plus you can feel great knowing your kids are enjoying nourishing, homemade food!

Here’s How to Prep School Lunches Ahead…

Create Your Menu

Create a Weekly Lunch Menu at the Beginning of the Week. This is key – you cannot prepare a week’s worth of lunches if you haven’t planned ahead! Do yourself a favor, though, and don’t get too creative. While it might be fun for your kids to have an entirely new and unique lunch every single day, it will make way more work for you (and you’ll end up spending a lot more money on lunch food, too!)

Instead, try to have some “standby” items that you can pack on a repeating basis. For instance, buy several pounds of turkey and then plan to pack turkey sandwiches a few days that week. Another tip: look ahead at your dinner plans for the week, and anticipate leftovers. For example, if you are grilling chicken one night, throw an extra piece or two on the grill and then use the leftovers to make sandwiches or wraps. ~BabySleepSite

Now that you have your menu and your “standbys” it is time to add veggies!

Don’t forget the veggies.

Prepare the veggies ahead of time. Slice vegetables for dipping and for loading on sandwiches and in wraps. Store in the fridge so you can grab what you need when it’s time to put the lunches together. If you’re cooking chicken for dinner this week, make extra to use in a wrap with lettuce and tomato, or stacked on wheat bread with cucumber, pepper slices, lettuce and tangy mustard. Homemade vegetable soup or chili will stay hot in the Thermos for a great lunch treat. Do a Mexican-style wrap on a pita — black beans, lettuce, avocado slices and chicken chunks. Build a sub sandwich on a deli roll loaded with fresh vegetables and slices of turkey and low-fat cheese. Kids love peanut butter, so sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly or honey on oat bread is always a winner. ~SheKnows

She Knows

Pack It

I suggest buying tupperware of similar sizes/shapes so you can easily stack them in your fridge, making your meal prep more space efficient so your fridge doesn’t become a war zone of toppling tupperware containers.

If you’re looking to store your prepped food as meals, look into Tupperware containers such as:

• Bebox:  Created by my friend Jenna this is a COLLAPSIBLE and CUSTOMIZABLE circular container       Pick your food, pick your portion sizes, pack it up and you are good to go!

(It even has a strap, hello Meal Prep Purse!)

• Meal Preppies : A more traditional type of tupperware – this rectangular shaped tupperware allows you to put all your food in one container, with three set portioned spots to keep the food from touching. This stacks nicely in the fridge and fits well into meal prep bags such as Isolator Fitness and Fitmark Bags.

~Eats and Exercise By Amber

Need help with some actual meal ideas? BuzzFeed Life has you covered!

18 Make-Ahead Meals And Snacks To Eat Healthy Without Even Trying

Happy Meal Prepping!