My kids like to take their own lunches because they can spend the precious little time they have eating instead of waiting in line to get their food. I like making their lunches because it saves money, and I can control the levels of nutrition and the amount of food they get (for my skinny son, the school lunch still leaves him hungry).
To make our school lunches the most budget friendly that they can be, incorporate some of these frugal strategies.
Reuse your lunch bags
Spending lots of money on baggies can defeat the savings of making your own lunch You can buy reusable sandwich bags or wash out the ones you have a few times to get more use out of them. We use BPA free plastic sandwich boxes and snack containers to pack out lunches. As a bonus, the boxes keep the food from getting squashed or bruised in the lunch bags and backpacks.
Packaged Snacks
Avoid individual pre-packaged snacks with one exception. If you happen to live near a bakery thrift store or outlet, you can often get these one serving snacks pretty cheaply. For example, I once got bags of goldfish crackers at 20 bags for $1. More likely savings is individual packages of cookies for about 25 cents per package, much cheaper than the vending machine cost of $1.75 or the store bought cost of $1.
If you don’t the opportunity for cheap individual snacks, buy them in their regular or bulk packaging and then repackage them yourself.
Make Some Lunchbox Favorites from Scratch
You can include all sorts of inexpensive items in the lunch boxes that you make at home yourself, from pizza to muffins, pasta salad to “lunchables.”
Look through your recipe books or take a few lunch related ones from the library to come up with new ideas for food that is easily portable.
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