You know, there is more than one way to wrap a sandwich.
With back to school approaching, I have been trying to think of some new ideas for bagged lunches. My son prefers them anyway, and we can save quite a bit of money by bagging it ourselves instead of paying for it at school.
One of my biggest obstacles is what to actually put the food in. My son has a plastic container that fits a sandwich, but he often forgets to take it our of his bag when he gets home from school. One trick that works for us is making him wash it out in the morning. When we knows that he faces this unpleasant chore, he is more likely to take it out of his lunch bag and place it in the dishwasher himself the afternoon before.
If my son happens to forget his sandwich container or lunch bag at school, then there has to be some quick thinking. Rather than spend money on baggies (which are also adding to the environmental waste) I simply save a few bread bags. I wash them out to remove the bread crumbs and then keep them for emergencies. Brown bags gathered from various purchases can work instead of a lunch bag for one day. You can also buy the brown bags in the grocery store, which I occasionally do to use for kids crafts and birthday goodie bags. They are much cheaper there than in the craft or even the mart stores.
For snacks and other goodies, I buy larger packages and then repackage things in reusable containers. Last year my son saw a prepackaged snack that contained sliced apples and peanut butter. I could recreate this by slicing the apples myself, dipping them lightly in lemon juice to prevent browning, and scooping out some peanut butter into a small container. The cost at the store for this snack: $3.49. My cost: $.70.
Apply some of these ideas to adult lunches, too!
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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