5 Days of Organizing Back to School…Food and Meal Planning
This week is our first week back to school and I’m joining 21 other bloggers in a 5 Days of Organizing and Cleaning series, so for the next couple days I’ll be talking about organizing for the school year.
Wednesday: Food and Meal Planning
Friday: Fresh Routines and Learning Lifestyles.
There will also be some sweet GIVEAWAYS throughout the week–so be sure to check out the links at the end of my posts each day! (Hint, Hint…there’s cash!)
This post is focused on easy, quick, simple food since we both work outside the home and the kiddos go to school outside the home. I also have a lot of tips for how to help your kids help you in the kitchen! Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers doing the 5 Day series for more detailed kitchen organizing posts and some great giveaways!
To talk about food, let’s start at the beginning…no, not breakfast–meal planning.
I LOVE meal planning. (I’ve posted about it here and here.) This is the ONE THING that’s made the biggest change in our household, stress and budget-wise! Try it, I know you’ll see what I mean. {Here’s a free Blank Weekly Meal Planner, or a fridge magnet Weekly Menu pad.} Save the menus you make and rotate them every couple of months. In 10 weeks you’ve got enough to get you thru a year if you’re feeling particularly uninspired.
We keep fruit right on the island counter all the time, where it can be grabbed by little hands for snacks or packing lunches.
BREAKFAST TIPS AND IDEAS
Here’s our biggest breakfast rule–people eat last. We make the kids get dressed (all the way to shoes!) and do all their chores (which is mostly feeding and watering animals) before they eat breakfast. It keeps them motivated. We use a simple breakfast rotation most of the time. I buy whatever fruit is on sale every week and we use it all week. No one is really picky in the mornings. A normal week looks like this:
Monday: Frozen waffles with fruit. (I make large batches of waffles with our handy-dandy waffle iron from our wedding that we just started using about two years ago and we freeze our own. Or Eggos sometimes, I’m not picky. )
Tuesday: Toast/bagel/English muffin with fruit. (Lisa over at CreativLEI has a great English muffin recipe!)
Wednesday: Leftover bacon/sausage and biscuits from Sunday morning. (I cook extras on purpose.)
Thursday: Cereal (Thursday is always cereal because Wed is a late night with church)
Friday: Oatmeal or muffins with yogurt and fruit. Or Fridays is a “special” day like a make-ahead casserole, breakfast wraps (green apples and sausage simmered in a dash of maple syrup and rolled in a tortilla–yum!), or parfait with fruit, yogurt, and granola (or Special K cereal).
We use an antique enamel bucket on a low shelf for kitchen towels. That’s easier for little hands to help put away or grab out to help clean up a mess. Drawers can get over full or require very careful folding.
Here’s some other quick tips…
- Switch to real maple syrup. It’s a bit more expensive, but a little goes a long way and it’s actually good for you!
- Cook breakfast for dinner one night and cook extras to reheat later in the week (we cook extras on Sunday mornings too).
- Use smoothies to sneak in extra fruit and veggies. One blender makes enough for all 5 of us to have some in the morning if that’s not our whole meal.
- Breakfast is one of the easiest meal for kids to learn to serve themselves. Put fruit in lower fridge drawers (wash it right away from the grocery store!), put cereal on lower pantry shelves, and stack plastic plates/bowls together in the cabinet. Divide milk into two smaller containers in the fridge for easy pouring and voila! You’re off breakfast duty by the time they’re 5. Seriously.
- Let older kids use a single-cup coffee maker to heat water for oatmeal–you can make it right in a coffee cup! Bag the oatmeal (and add-ins!) in single serve packages ahead of time and store in an airtight container. (We look for something mouse-proof to discourage “visitors”, with flat tops for stacking–like these Storage Cubes.)
- Always clear the table–even if the dishes just go to the sink right now. I’d rather walk in to the house with a clean table and dirty dishes in the sink than walk in to an entire meal littering the table before I have to serve dinner. I know mornings are rushed, but train everyone to clear up right away.
- Invest in a good, solid step stool. (We love this one from Ikea and have one on each floor!
We keep all the kid cups and lunch bottles on the lower shelf. It’s easiest to reach, but it also means that they could accidentally knock things out and nothing would break. They have to ask first, but our kids have been getting cups and fixing their own water from the fridge dispenser since they were 3 yo.
LUNCH
We’re still developing our lunch “program,” so honestly, I’m still trying and testing out tips myself.
But our kids can all pack their own lunches, with supervision. They start making their own sandwiches at 4 yo. A whole piece of fruit and a yogurt cup are easy to grab and they can choose what they want. We have one compartment in our silverware drawer that is just for plastic kid utensils and they are allowed to grab what they need for lunches from that section only–no taking my good stuff when it might not come back!
DINNER
Dinner used to be the worst part of my day–and any time my meal planning habits slip, it still is! We all get home late (and hungry!) and we have animal chores to do, as well as homework, dinner, baths, and bedtime. And for some reason our kids just ALWAYS walk through the door at home and inevitably start either arguing or galloping around the house whooping like Indians and whacking each other with light sabres.
This is what my evenings look like! It’s the witching hour!
Meal planning is a life saver! When you plan, you get to look ahead and match your menu to your schedule. Here’s what we’re looking at right now…
Monday: Soup and sandwich night–because we’re at soccer practice until 7:30. It’s light, it’s quick and easy, it’s healthy and can include all your food groups. Last year soup night was Tuesdays because of piano lessons. We use canned soup, homemade frozen soup, or crock pot soups.
Tuesday: Full meal. This is our night for dinners that take more than 20 minutes.
Wednesdays: Pizza. We have church on Wednesdays (or I have a night meeting) so this works for us right now.
Thursday: Crockpot meal or pasta. This is also a soccer night, but not as late, so I have time to add bread and salad, etc. and we have time to digest a heavier meal before bedtime. Pasta works well if you use a jar sauce or make a large batch of your own sauce and freeze it in small portions. (You can also cook extra and throw sauce and noodles together with some cheese into a “baked spaghetti” or “pizza casserole” to freeze for later in just 5 extra minutes.)
Friday: Family Movie Night. We cook, but it’s usually taco night (which is actually a great way to get veggies in your kids!), chicken fingers (sometimes healthy and homemade, sometimes frozen from Tysons), or breakfast for dinner–something no one complains about–and we eat in the living room together.
Saturday and Sunday I try to plan full meals as well–so we have leftovers for lunches (mostly for me!) and that’s the perfect time to just double recipes for freezing since I’m already in the kitchen.
Think outside the box for your organization! This is our bread “box.” It’s easy for the kiddos to get in and out of, looks nice on the counter, and provides no temptation for “little visitors” of the furry, four-footed, cheese-eating variety.
Here’s some quick tips for busy weeknights:
- Do snacks! It won’t ruin their dinner, I promise! Between the commute and chores, we tend to eat late. I tell my kiddos they can have a snack as soon as they unpack from school and get their chores done (sound familiar?)–as long as they finish before I start dinner. They can have a piece of fruit, cereal/granola bar (we’re going to try making our own!!), or a cheese stick (lately we just pre-cut our own from block cheese!). We all know that tired and hungry = cranky.
- Freeze browned hamburger! Yep, I brown up a large package on Fridays and then freeze most of it in single-meal bags for up to 30 days. It’s easy to dump in spaghetti sauce, use for tacos, or throw in a casserole.
- Cook extra rice and freeze it for later.
- Cook extra pasta and make up a casserole to freeze for later. (Then you also have something on hand for those give-food moments like sickness, new babies, or funerals.)
- Cut up fruits and veggies ahead of time so it’s easy to throw together salads, stir-fry, or crock-pot meals.
- Use tablecloths to eat on! Sound crazy? Well, there’s nothing meal-related that spray n’ wash can’t take out and if you have unexpected company, just whip the tablecloth off and you’ve got a clean tabletop! Plus it helps soak up spills before they splash on the floor. I’d rather throw a tablecloth in the washer than mop the floor!
Tomorrow I’ll be sharing about how we’re simplifying the kids’ wardrobes and getting the laundry monster under control!
In the mean time, be sure to enter the GIVEAWAY posted below!
And stop by and visit some of the other bloggers in the series. There’s some really good stuff out there!
I love the breakfast ideas as I tend to get stuck in a rut – plus I love hearing that maple syrup is good for you!
I am and always have been a homeschooler…but these are ideas that would work for you or for those who homeschool, as we get mighty busy and scrunched for time too. I loved this post and would love to glean some ideas from you.
Thanks for linking up at Haven of Rest this past week.