5 Tips to Get Your Kids Making Their Own Lunchboxes

Short term pain, long term sanity gain

Posted by Nicole

These are just some things I've figured out along the way. The products are all things I use myself and love (no affiliate links).

I'm that mum. While everyone else is still cutting the crusts off sandwiches, I'm proudly outsourcing kids lunchbox packing to child labour.

My 8 and 10-year-old have been making their own lunchboxes since they were 6 and 8. Before that it was my husband's job — he leaves before we're all awake, so frankly it was the least he could do. Has he ever once complained about losing that responsibility? He has not.

Is there a painful week or two at the beginning? Yes. Will they occasionally show up to school with three crackers and a sad raisin? Also yes. Do I feel bad about it? I do not. Because four years later I have fully, gloriously outsourced this task forever. Here's how to make it work.

1. Bribe them. Openly and without shame.

Take them on a special lunchbox supermarket shop and actually let them choose stuff. The fancy crackers. The cookies they've been eyeing for months. One or two things that wouldn't normally survive contact with the trolley. They helped choose it, they want to eat it, suddenly they care about making the lunchbox. The investment in one slightly indulgent shop buys you an entire term of not making lunches. Cheapest deal of your life.

2. Wash lunchbox night before

Do not expect a child under 8 to begin their lunchbox journey by first dealing with yesterday's crime scene. There's a sandwich that has achieved sentience. A yoghurt in its third stage of grief. Nobody is starting their morning like that.

Wash it the night before and leave it on the bench, ready to go. You're removing the barrier so the habit forms first. The responsibility of washing it themselves comes later. Baby steps.

(ADHD mums — The Cleanery foaming dish spray changed my kitchen life in a way that feels embarrassing to admit publicly.)

3. Buy a lunchbox that doesn't require a spatial reasoning test to pack

Do not make your child play Tetris at 7:30am. Get a bento-style box with compartments. Everything has a home, nothing needs sadwrap (cling wrap). We've used these B.Box ones for four years (not cheap, took me a while to enter the credit card, but so worth it). Still intact. Dishwasher safe, which is great for a proper wash. I should do that more than I do.

They even have a silicon bit, so you can fit an entire apple! (if you've struggled with that - you feel me).

If they need the extra prompt, write in permanent marker inside each compartment what goes there. SANDWICH. FRUIT. TREAT. Zero decision fatigue, zero negotiations.

4. Let them be the boss

For the first week, set it all up, get things out on the bench, cut the fruit, make the sandwich if needed. But frame it as: they decide what goes in. You're the assistant. They're the CEO.

I expected to have to police the nutrition. But kids know what a lunchbox looks like, they've been eating from one their whole lives. Mine just put in a sandwich, fruit, biscuits, a muesli bar. Unprompted. Get some vegetables into them at dinner. Scurvy is rare. They'll be fine.

5. Stock the pantry like you're preparing for a mild apocalypse

I don't bake. I've made peace with this. My hack: buy aggressively at school bake sales. Fill the freezer. Load the pantry. Kids have great lunchbox fillers all week, school gets their fundraising money, you haven't touched the oven. This is winning.

If you want something easy that makes you look like you tried, my friend Anna got me on to this banana blueberry bran muffin recipe is legitimately great. Decent protein and fibre, not too much sugar, uses up yoghurt that's quietly dying in your fridge.

Bonus: keep it going on holidays

If they can make a lunchbox, they can make their own lunch on school holidays too. You've built the habit — do not let it evaporate the second the bell stops. Hold the line. Future you is begging you.

WARNING - your kitchen will likely look like this after the kids have made their lunches boxes - just breathe it's a process.

This is my kitchen last week, there was also peanut butter on the floor!!!. We are now moving in to the clean up your bloody mess stage of the process.