It is time to send the children off to school, and I have some ideas for you to save money on lunches if you do not qualify for free or reduced lunches at your school. It is easy to pack inexpensive healthy lunches for your child for under a $1 each!
Main Dish:
Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Lunch Meat and Cheese, make your own lunchable with crackers!
Crackers, and lunch meat can actually be very affordable when you find deals with coupons. In recent coupon inserts there have been coupons for Nabisco Crackers,and these are cheap at Homeland when the coupons double!
Buy your bread at the discount Bread Store. (there is a Sara Lee one on NW 19th and Broadway in OKC)
Snacks:
Avoid Convenience such as pre-bagged cookies, crackers, and chips.
Buy the baggies that don’t ziplock, or be eco friendly and use reusable containers
Carrot Sticks
Apples
Bananas
Grapes
Make your own Peanut Butter crackers
Make sure the serving sizes are correct, therefore less waste.
If you have time, it is healthier and inexpensive to make your own snacks, cookies and muffins to pack for snacks or a healthy after school lunch.
Pack reusable water bottles for drinks, it is good for children to learn the importance of water drinking at a young age, plus water is FREE!
With these tips, in combination with shopping store sales and coupons, you could easily feed 1 child for under $1 for a packed lunch. Plus, when I worked in the schools, it was amazing how much food those children wasted when they bought school lunches, there was enough food wasted to feed a small village!
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This is great even for adults. I take my lunch everyday, and I'm always looking for new ideas. I like the crackers/lunch meat/cheese idea. I think that would be a perfect lunch.