The Lazy Genius Podcast - Bonus: Packing School Lunches

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

I did not anticipate recording this episode, but after this week’s Office Hours episode where I answered your questions, I realized that this particular question needed a mini episode all its own. It was the most frequently asked question in the Instagram post, and that makes sense. It’s early-mid August, and school is about to start. School lunches are a whole thing.   Helpful Companion Links This week’s Office Hours episode. Planetbox Rover Lunchbox Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there. You are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is a bonus episode, Packing School Lunches. I did not anticipate recording this episode, but after this week's office hours episode where I answered your questions, I realized that this particular question needed its whole own mini little episode. It was the most frequently asked question in the Instagram post. And that makes sense. It's early to mid-August and school's about to start, if not started already for you. School lunches are totally a thing. Now, like I said, there were a lot of comments, but I chose this one from Kristen Bland as our example today.

Kristen writes this, packing school lunch, finding something that will be balanced-ish in terms of food groups, cost-effective, and flexible enough to meet the ever-shifting goals, ever-shifting goalposts of a second-grader's preferences, while also not consuming a lot of my bandwidth. Okay. I have a few thoughts here. Now, this is not a system. It's just a series of considerations for you, depending on your particular lunchbox stresses. But before we get into those, I want to quickly comment on school lunches provided by the actual school. Cafeteria lunches, they get a bad rap. I think that there is often like an implicit bias against our kids eating school lunches. And I don't want this

episode to perpetuate that bias. Some schools don't provide lunch. Some kids like mine prefer homemade lunches, and I have made the choice to say yes to that. There's nothing wrong with making your kids lunches for school. But I do think it's vital to acknowledge that cafeteria lunches are not bad or need to be off the table. For a lot of kids, even kids at my own kids elementary school, it's a Title I school, so there are a lot of food and secure children. The cafeteria, breakfasts, and lunches are the only meals those kids get.

Some parents don't have the funds to make lunch for their kids every day. so the free lunch provided by the school is a lifesaver. Some parents don't have the time or energy to make lunches for their kids because of how much they're having to work. Essentially, cafeteria school lunches are a wonderful resource. Homemade lunchbox lunches are not morally or fundamentally better than cafeteria lunches. So this episode is aimed at packing school lunches because that's the challenge that we're working with here. But I wanted to clearly state this up front. Caffetariat lunches are just as good for kids from a nourishment standpoint and a social standpoint as homemade lunches. Okay, so on to our thoughts about packing lunches. First, you have to name what matters most. Not what matters, what matters most.

Kristen named a few things that do matter. Balance, budget, versatility for a picky eater, and personal bandwidth. Those are all four important things. And I see how they would all matter. If you're like Kristen with several things, I need you to pick just one. It doesn't. doesn't mean you don't pay attention to the other things. You absolutely will and should. But take the time to choose the thing that matters most so that when it comes time to make a hard decision where only one thing can matter, you already know what does. Otherwise, you're going to feel overwhelmed, annoyed, and stuck because you can't make everything matter at the same time, every time. Okay, the second thought I have is that your kids, they might not care about variety or repetition like you

think they do? Listen, Annie eats salami and cheese literally every single day for lunch. This is not hyperbole. Every single day. Occasionally, she'll ask for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But when I say occasionally, I mean maybe three or four times a year. I did the math recently to see if I could nail down how many pieces of this one particular brand of Aldi Salami that she has eaten in her entire life and the number was somewhere close to like 4,000. Y'all, she just went to the doctor. All her vitals are great. Like she's a healthy girl. It's fine. She just eats salami every day. Now, was there a time where I felt lazy because I just kept giving her the same thing? Sure. Does she actually prefer to eat the same protein every day? She does. Fantastic. I'm not going to spend my time

on creativity and variety and finding new lunch ideas when she doesn't really want those things. Now, this is really important for you to hear. Why does this work for me? It was, works for me because variety doesn't matter. Like having a wide variety of things that I rotate through lots of lunches is not a top priority of mine and it is definitely not the most important thing. Now, if it matters to you approaching lunches this way that I do, it's not going to work, right? Now, both of us would be terrific parents taking care of our kids.

But different priorities lead to different choices. Don't try and make choices or shame yourself for choices you're not making. when your priority doesn't match. Okay, so back to what the kid thinks. I am just inviting you to not make assumptions about what your kid wants, especially if those assumptions are making lunches harder for you.

If they don't care and you don't care either, stick with the same thing that works. We'll be right back. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner. host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Okay, now I want to give you a lunch packing system that we have been using for over a decade. The system uses a combination of three of my favorite lazy genius principles. Decide once, put everything in its place, and batch it. Now, this system might not be an exact fit for you. In fact, it probably won't be. And I'm not sharing it so that you'll copy my system. I'm sharing so you can see how the principles work for us based on what matters. Okay. So here is what we do. And it begins with our actual lunchbox. My kids use planet box lunch boxes, tongue twister. Planet box. They usually have a sale on Black Friday and also on Earth Day. So keep an eye out if you are in the market. But honestly, you can use kind of whatever bento box type lunchboxes you like. Planet Box lunch boxes, they are stainless steel bento boxes that sort of like open on a lever, like a lid of a treasure chest, you know? I love them for a couple of reasons. They last forever. They are easy to put in the dishwasher, like where you open it up and then you put it in the dishwasher like you would, like a long cutting board, you know. They are easy for kids to open and eat out of, especially when your

kids are little because there's no packaging or lids or anything like that. I've heard that from lots of preschool teachers, especially where they're like, I love this lunchbox so much because I don't have to, I don't have to do anything. I don't have to like open Tupperware and pull apart string cheese and like all these different things because everything is open and ready in the box. And the most important reason that I love these boxes is they help me and the kids put everything in its place. The type of plant of boxes that we have, It has five compartments in it. There's a big area that's usually for, you know, like a main protein.

It fits a sandwich. For us, we also put like pepperoni, salami and cheese, obviously, like what have you. Then there are three medium-sized compartments. And for us, two of them are for fruit. And one is for a crunchy thing. Pretzels, crackers, stuff like that. Then there's this little tiny compartment in the middle of the lunchbox, the very little middle.

And my kids, they literally call whatever goes in there, the middle thing. The middle thing is usually like M&Ms or, you know, a couple of sourpatch kids or those chocolate covered marshmallows from Trader Joe's that fit perfectly in that little spot. It's like a little dessert cubby. Even when, y'all, even when we have lunch at home, like on regular plates, the kids will still ask if they can get a middle thing. It is hilarious. But we have decided once, not just what goes in everybody's lunches, but even the compartments, those things go in. everybody gets a protein, two fruits, a crunchy thing, and a middle thing. And if one of the fruits is like a cut up orange, it's like picker, that needs the big container,

which honestly only happens for Sam because he's the only kid that likes oranges, then I will just adjust the protein to pepperoni slices that day and put those into one of the medium-sized sections. You know, they fit great. The idea, though, is that we have decided once what goes in everybody's lunch, right? Protein, two fruit, crunchy thing, middle thing, and everything has the same place every single time. Now, let's bring in the principal batch it. When you're dealing with all the possibilities of something, I find it helpful to brainstorm all those possibilities at once. I talked about this on Monday's episode, the office hours episode about like, where do you take your toddler? It's nice to just make a

list all at once, right? Batch the decision making. So since I have three kids with three very different sets of preferences, there was a season where I literally wrote down what they liked on a piece of paper. So I wouldn't have to think about it. Now, I've made so many lunches at this point that the list is in my brain, you know, but at the time, that list was super helpful to me. Recently, I had to write the list down for my mom when she stayed with the kids for over a week during the school year, while cousin and I went on our 20-year anniversary cruise. It was hilarious how many differences there were by my kids. But my mom said that list was enormously helpful because she knew what options she had for what compartments in their lunchboxes.

Like this really does help a lot. Side note, some of you all already know this. This feels like it's important to say. Cause and I have a very even division of labor in our house. I feel very lucky to have a husband who does not see me is the only person capable of doing traditionally female tasks around the house. That said, everything related to food except the cleaning up is my purview. like he'll cook when I need him to but everything food and cooking is kind of in my chart of chores not his that's why I usually make lunches so I'm talking about that not as like the mom always makes the lunches when there's a mom and a dad around but in our house like that is true but by choice so just want to make that clear you don't have to be the one to make the lunches if you're the lady

you don't have to okay back to batch it again this list of what everybody gets is in my head right but I know what each kid's individual lists are for all those categories of main fruits, crunchies, and middle things. This might seem very simplistic because you're like, well, so do I. But if you can access that list on a piece of paper or easily in your brain, you're not like, what should I do? Like choose from what's there. Choose from what you've already decided. That also might mean not choosing new things. Maybe. I don't know. Okay. So sometimes the kids will help me make lunch or I will take care of a couple of the cubbies and then say, okay, go get your crunchy thing and your middle thing and leave them to it. But we all know what goes where.

And we all also know like what they like, you know. Now, let's talk about fruits for a second. I used to put carrot sticks and cucumbers and bell pepper strips and stuff like that in their lunches. Those foods always came back every single time, like for years and years. So I stopped. We introduced vegetables at dinner, not during lunch, at least right now. That is the choice that I've made, and that is a choice that works for us. It could be a choice that works for you too. If you feel like you're trying to pressure lunch into like, you know, a healthy eating situation, that's like a lot to hold every single morning. And then you have this, you're defeated when you, they come home and they didn't eat their vegetables. Like it's so discouraging. So you could just take vegetables like

mostly out of the running, if that is okay with your priorities, right? Okay. So that's one choice that we make for lunch. I also do not make food look cute. I don't do that. That is another choice that is often applied to kids lunches, especially produce, right? I also do not make fruit more interesting with yogurt dips or fruit salad dressings, stuff like that. They just get washed and sometimes cut fruit, like pretty close to how it came off of the ground or the tree. Now again, that's just another choice that works for us, but it does not have to work for you, right? I will not bore you with like what everybody eats and all the things, you know?

But I do want to just say that the point of batching is to have a series of decisions made all at once. Like those are our categories. They go in these containers. Each kid has a list that lives in my head of what goes in it. And because of that, it's just not too bad. bad. It's not too bad. I will also point out that because of the simplicity of what the kids eat, there is not a lot of making lunches. Like it's really just taking something from a box or a plastic

clamshell and putting it straight into the lunchbox, right? I used to follow a couple of like lunchmaking moms on Instagram. And I honestly loved all of their unique bento gatherings. It was, was really fun. It's so pretty, too, to open, you like to see it opened up and all the cute things, all the little like cucumber stars and stuff. And I'm really glad that people make those kinds of lunches and that their kids enjoy them and that they, you know, have careers by like inspiring us to have fun and be creative in the kitchen with our kids. But I started to feel pretty crappy about myself because I never did those things. Or I tried. I mean, I do have the little star cookie cutter. I cannot remember the last time I used it.

it's just not for me, right? I mean, it'd be cool for me if it was for me, but I value a lot more things more than I value creative fun lunches. I use different creative outlets for myself. Some moms use their kids lunches. That's like a legit thing. So if you, well, not just moms, moms, whoever, lots of people who make lunches, it doesn't have to be the moms. But if you want to keep things super simple, you can do that. There is nothing wrong with that. But I think in our heads, we feel like there is. This might be a wild thing to say, but like, I don't mind making lunches. Because I have named what matters, I have supported it with my choices, like no shame choices, and with the ease of the lazy genius principles, I have let those pressures go, right? And it's just,

it's not so bad. It's actually like, fine. It's very neutral. Making lunches for kids is very neutral for me. So it might not have to be that hard for you either. Now, one final thing that's important to bring into the school lunch conversation is the presence of a morning routine. One of the reasons making lunches is not super stressful is because we have a pretty stable morning routine that includes those lunches. We have slowly been building this routine for years and even though it sometimes has to shift a bit like this year when Ben goes to middle school for the first time. And he's going to go a little bit later to school than he went when he was in elementary school,

right? But other than those kinds of shifts, like our morning routine is pretty much the same. And making lunches has always been part of it. There was a time where we would make lunches in the evening and then it just stopped being as helpful. And so now it's just part of our mornings. Now, I am not saying that you need a new morning routine or whatever. Like, no, no, no, no.

Just remember if your morning feels. a little chaotic for whatever reason, of course it's going to be hard to make lunch. It is going to be annoying because you're already dealing with the relative chaos of trying to get everybody to school. That's why some people like to make at least part of their kids' lunches at night, right? To help stave off some of that morning chaos. So here this permission. If mornings are already a little crazy, do not beat yourself up for not being able to add an entire meal to the morning. It's hard to make lunches every single day. It really is, especially if mornings are unpredictable in your house for whatever reason.

You might have a cranky kid who never wakes up. You might have ADHD and your executive function skills are harder to access in the morning. You might be trying to fit in an old routine into a new season of life and you cannot figure out why it's not working. I just want you to be kind and patient as you do this. Yes, we do have calmish mornings at our house. But my kids also only eat maybe 12 foods. You know, again, you're not going to see star cucumbers. You're not going to see sandwich rolls. You're not going to see that stuff in their boxes ever. That's not what matters to us.

Calm and simplicity do, though. So that's what I focused on for 10 years now, which is why it's a little easier at our house. It's not that I have it figured out across the board. I've simply named what matters, made my problems smaller, and applied a lazy genius principle or two to find what works. And you can do. So that is our bonus episode on packing school lunches. I hope it helped and thanks for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra.

I'll see you on Monday. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.