I know everyone is tired of the political ads and campaigns going on right now so I’m just going to go ahead and add one more.
I need to before it’s too late.
I have less than one year to plead my case.
Less than one year until I have to send my little ones off to school with lunches packed.
Before the hysteria begins I would like to ask that the competition to create the most ridiculously creative lunch for your elementary schooler please end.
Put down that knife that is slicing grapes into one-sixteenths to make the exact replica of fish scales atop a see of pureed blueberries.
That utensil shaving the Little Mermaid’s hair out of an orange? Accidentally drop it in the whirring garbage disposal.
Don’t set foot in your car at midnight in search of raisins the size of Spongebob’s pupils.
There are some of us who are lucky to cut the crust off of a turkey sandwich without losing a finger.
Those who can’t open a box of Uncrustables without a barrage of paper cuts.
Think of our children. Our children who must sit next to yours as he sips from his drink box made of legos, his sandwich coordinating with the classroom theme of the week and his lunch box handsewn, embroidered and given a rustic finish.
They will leave our safe arms with perfectly mediocre visions of cheese sticks and pre-packaged fruit snacks and come home with shoulders hunched, heads held low, whimpering for the recreation of the second scene in Toy Story in cold cuts by the next day at 7 am.
So please, take one less trip to the grocery store, five less hours in the kitchen and enjoy waking up 5 seconds before the bus arrives like the rest of us who can barely remember to label the crayons and glue.
It’s for your good, our good and the good of children everywhere. Think of how many loaves of bread could be recycled from the discarded shavings of your built to scale Cinderella Castle. You could feed two ducks and a squirrel with those remains.
Back away from your paring knife, color-coordinated cupcake tins and drafting table, let’s return to the jelly-soaked-through-the-bread sandwiches of our youth.
It’s the least we can do. Truly, the least.
Or would that be sending money for hot lunch?? *Gasp*
Let’s not disappoint the little people (who cook on the floor in winter pajamas, at 5 am).
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If I want to stay up an extra hour to make a special fancy lunch for my daughter that is my business. Kids are more likely to try to eat certain things when incorporated into something that looks “cool”.
My daughter eats healthy, she loves her veggies and hardly eats sweets, that’s by her own choice. I don’t make fancy lunches everyday, but when I do, my daughter surely feels special that I took the extra effort.
And as far as the food pieces that are cut off… I surely do not waste it… I use it for bread pudding, bread crumbs… Or croutons…
Another comment on hot meal.. I do sometimes send her off with a home cooked warm meal in her thermos. Much healthier and tastier than what is being served in the cafeteria.
Oh and one last thing. Yes, I pack my daughters lunch and all reusable containers, to include her utensils and cloth napkins. So instead of the brown bags and the Ziploc bags .. think about all the unnecessary trash being created out there!
I tried to use the fancy sandwich cutters last year with Cady (where “fancy” equals a flower kind of shape). She came and said, “Mom can you cut it out with the shaped sandwiches and just give me a real sandwich.” I asked if it was embarrassing or something and she just told me that no, it just wasn’t necessary. Love that kid.
At the risk of being socially stoned, I agree with you 100%. MAybe I’m selfish, but seriously. Why would I want to spend 45 minutes making bento lunches and fruit sculptures and sandwiches shaped like elmo when all my son is going to do is devour it and destroy it? Seriously? I have a few sandwich cutters (dinosaurs, elmo face, heart…) that I’ll use just because he doesn’t eat the crust, but that’s about as elaborate as I get. Throw the sandwich, some fruit and a snack pack in a lunch box and let him go. He could really care less.
This is why about a year ago, I started labeling all my posts “It’s a humor site, people!”
I skip the whole thing and let my 7 year old make her own lunch (we just have a basic guideline: must have a protein, dairy, fruit and veggie). And there are days that she’s EXCITED to take a brown bag instead of her cute little cooler bag. I save the fancy food for myself, since I know I’m the only one who will appreciate the effort! 😉
I love how all the haters love to tell you what you can’t say. It is the classic, “say what you want as long as I agree with it.” This is America people and people can write about whatever they want on THEIR blog. Don’t like it? Move on and don’t come back. Try trolling for places to spread love and positive things instead of things you don’t agree with. BTW we do homemade lunchables here but there is nothing fancy about it. Ripped up lunch meat and cheese with some crackers and some other goodies in the lunch box. I hate all the fancy lunches myself and personally my kids wouldn’t eat most of that crap.
I don’t mind the overachievers making their lunches, but then don’t push them on me. Don’t fill my Pinterest and Facebook feeds with ridiculous over the top Earth Day themed lunches and offer them to me as “helpful and easy.” That’s total BS. They are neither helpful nor easy. OAMs are doing it for the attention. Your kid could care less if her strawberries are cut into flowers or cubes. It’s all the same to her. Also, as an aside, I love that thread up above where the woman is all, “Don’t be so judgy. I would never! Don’t judge me – you bad mom”. There is nothing better than a hypocrite who claims SHE’S being judged and then tells YOU to step away from your computer make and a fun lunch for your kids. WTF.
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I can’t stop laughing!
Not only do I not have the inclination to buy super special plastic boxes for their lunch (our regular assortment of mismatched gladware will have to do), I think they would be humiliated to have their sandwich look like a walrus with baby carrot tusks. My 12 year old buys lunch every day (it is not “cool” to bring lunch in middle school he assures me), and my 9 yo daughter is happy to see her food without supreme artistic effort on my part, thank goodness!
Wait, people really do this? I thought it was all a Pinterest fantasy. People don’t actually make stuff from Pinterest do they? Do they??
Oops. Mom fail.
I do ask my son if he would like squares or triangles when I cut his sandwiches, though. That seems to work here. 🙂
love this post! i so wish our school had a cafeteria! i love wednesdays, when they order dominoes pizza!
I’m not sure how I missed this post! I usually read all of them!
I couldn’t agree with you more! My kids either make their own lunch or get hot lunch at school… and that’s as good as it gets! Lunch is in a brown bag too! Nothing cutesy unless I find some character printed lunch bags at the dollar store.
I know, it was so much simpler when my teen was young.
Hear, hear! Don’t these people have anything better to do with themselves?? (Ok really I’m just jealous).
Lunches are my “Newman”. Seriously hate packing. And I have to add morning & afternoon snacks too. HATE!
Yeah, I do not enjoy packing lunches, my oldest does her own now but I will be heading into a new phase of packing them all over again soon. Sigh.
Oh, how this cracks me up! (The comment about raisins the size of Sponge Bob’s pupils made me do a spit take with my Diet Coke.)
I’ll gladly sign on to your campaign!
Yay, thanks, hopefully between the um, 10 of us I have recruited we can turn things around :).
Now, this is one campaign that I can stand behind proudly!
And? You crack me up!! My girlfriend and I were just texting one another about the time and creativity it takes to cut off crusts, pull our the cookie cutters and make fun animal faces with our kids lunches this morning! I will be sending her this post.
Thank you for taking up such an important cause! Making lunches is hard enough (not to mention whatever I make seems to come back home at the end of the day completely untouched . . .). xo
Lunch for kids, really it’s making a job of joys, which i like always.
Hilarious!!! I packed an enormous lunch the first day. Not fancy, just enough to feed the whole class. She ate about a quarter of it. Now we are down to a formula. I did back myself into a corner with the animal cookie cutters for the bread…learn one from me and just don’t go there. I will never be able to stop 😉
Oh my gosh – this is so brilliant and so true! You had me laughing from my toes. I felt this exact way when my son and I were in Mommy and Me. Some moms had the “over the top” approach to the snack and I would just cringe!
Those over achieving lunch makers are C-R-A-Z-Y.
It’s all I can do to tell my daughter to slap some nutella on a few slices of bread and make a piggy out of them. 😉
Okay, if it’s just nutella and then a piggy then I can handle that, two steps is enough for me ;).
You know who pulls this crap? The same moms who create, produce, and direct elaborate Elf on the Shelf productions. Would everyone please just stop the madness!
In all seriousness, it would’ve never even occurred to me to make fancy school lunches for my kid. Are being clueless and being an underachiever one and the same?
“his drink box made of legos, his sandwich coordinating with the classroom theme of the week and his lunch box handsewn, embroidered and given a rustic finish” – That part made me actually LOL. I am not crafty enough to make beautiful food like that. Or, really, much of anything very beautiful. BUT I will sometimes arrange their food in a happy face on their plates.
Go ahead and get ready to hate me. I am an overachieving lunch maker. I even have a whole series on my blog to promote it right now. But, I have an excuse: I don’t cook dinner. Seriously, The Dudes pretty much survive on frozen taquitos and the occasional dinner from the grocery store cafe. I’m too busy after school, and they have so many activities, and we don’t get home until like 8:30 every night. So I make them a healthy lunch, that is fun so they will eat it, to make up for the fact that the guy at McDonald’s knows our friggin’ order. I will slack off again in the winter when the schedule resumes a normal level of un-manageability. Until then, I have to oppose this vote. Otherwise I’m pretty sure my children will actually turn into corndogs. Or tatertots. Or something.
Hilarious. I loved this, especially the “jelly-soaked-through-the-bread sandwiches of our youth.” It’s so true!!
Mine were always soaked with jelly, they were awful and did you get the semi-warm milk too?
Its a nice campaign….I didn’t realize that school lunches had become such a competition until this year.
I am the hot lunch mom!
I’m with you, baby. Ban the Bento Box. Reclaim leftover spareribs and a smear of cream cheese on a Wheat Thin!
Yes! Down with Bento box lunches.
(Sorry if you get a ton of comments from me. Your site doesn’t like me)
ha! i hear you. i have a pinterest board called “cute kid lunches i’ll never make,” though to be honest a lot of it doesn’t really take that long if you have the right kitchen stuff.
now WAIT just a minute!!! are you telling me that when Goose starts kindergarten I’m going to have to send FOOD with her? and there is actually more to the process of creating those fancy-schmancy lunches than just pinning and re-pinning them?? CRAP. my kids are screwed.
I would be happy enough if my son eats whatever is on the school lunch menu. 🙂
I saw all those sandwich makers at Pottery Barn Kids and I rolled my eyes. Who has the time????
This mad me giggle. Because I am most definitely NOT that mom. I think all the little lunches are cute as can be, but my kid eats cereal and poptarts for breakfast, so we’re lucky if he gets in a decent looking sandwich for lunch. I didn’t realize that school lunches had become such a competition until this year. I blame Pinterest.
Simply, Jessica, this made me laugh.
I’m reminded of the school lunch scene in Uncle Buck — and I’m pretty sure that will be my kids when it’s time for Daddy to pack lunches.
THANK YOU!!!! I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one. I pinned all that crap but I can’t ever imagine having the time. I can barely throw a sandwich, apple, and granola bar in the lunch bag.
Its a great stuff for the kids..GREAT idea to save the extra bread pieces for the ducks at the park!
Are parents really competing on the packed-lunch front?! That’s one less thing to look forward to one day, then ….
Thank you for your sweet and inspirational comment on my blog the other week. I really appreciated your thoughts and well wishes, and am so sorry about the loss of your daughter.
I’ve been seeing pictures of the lunches everyone is making all over the place. Pinterest is full of them. Let’s hope it’s just the minority of moms.
I don’t get that fancy with the lunches, like making them look like stuff and all that but I do have fun packing them. I’m laughing since I’ve been doing the Beyond Bologna posts these last few weeks with some other blogging friends… lol!
And GREAT idea to save the extra bread pieces for the ducks at the park! 😉
Elaine! Stop it, grab a baggie and a brown paper bag and let the rest of us off the hook ;).
omg – this is hilarious. I fear it might be ME you speak of in my school. I have no idea what the other kids are eating, but I did buy those tupperware type containers with sections and I am making lots of lunches. And you know what? I got a bill for $2+change from school, so what’s she doing with my makeshift lunchables?
Seriously, tho, I’ll be posting about her lunches for fun, and you’ll see that they include uncrustables and other prepackaged business. And maybe ONE time did we use a cookie cutter to make circles of turkey. Because the child won’t really eat the bread, so I have figured crackers and similarly shaped items might be worth a shot. 😉
Oh no Andrea, you’ve got to stop to save the rest of us :)! That is so funny you ended up with a bill, she’s probably trading her cute stuff then buying an extra snack or two.
For reals.
All my son needs for kindergarten is a snack. That’s all. And yet I felt pressure to get perfect snack-sized tupperwares with his name on them.
Luckily I couldn’t find them at Target. Plastic baggies FTW!
Yay for baggies! Although I have to admit when I was snack mom last year in my son’s preschool class I did search Pinterest for the perfect idea.
I barely get out the door with any lunch made on time! You have no worries from me!
Oh good, I thought for sure you were one of those cute lunch-making moms :).
I’m right with you. I used to try to be fancy, but then I was tearing my hair out trying to get stuff ready and then my oldest never ate it anyway. Now for him it’s ritz bits or a yogurt and whatever else I can quickly throw in. I even gave up on sandwiches. I beg…BEG…him to buy lunch.
My middle guy (with SPD/asd) eats the same thing every single day. So no brain power or bento box there.
Count me as a supporter of your campaign!
That’s how my oldest is, same thing every day, thank goodness. The fanciest I get is cutting off the crust, I can only imagine what’s going to happen when they go to school next year and see all they are missing.
the bento box fad is killing me too! Jeez Louise! what the heck in wrong with a sandwich, some sort of fruit, and some carrot sticks in a baggie? why does everything need to be all cutely arranged and color coordinated?
I know! I can’t do any of it. I can color coordinate clothes and that’s about it.
Haha, I love how bento boxes looks like but I am not talented into making them.
my first attempt was really bad.
Mickey mouse head but Mickey’s ears were not on the same size.
You’re brilliant!
I think you need to take this campaign to Japan. Did you know they spend 2 hours making one bento lunch box??
Are you kidding? Can you imagine? I don’t even take that long making a meal unless it’s sitting in the crock pot.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m voting for you. People are insane who spend that much time on kids lunches! I want to know if their kids really eat all that crap? Hello–picky eaters?
Exactly. I really do wonder if any off the kids eat that stuff. Mine would just be playing with it (or at least that’s what I tell myself to make myself feel better).
I certainly agree that the crazy Japanese-style lunches, with all their details are over the top and a bit much. On the other hand, it’s really, really easy to give kids a varied, healthful, satisfying packed lunch, without spending much time on it. I wish we could find a happy medium between Lunchables and the lunches you describe, and just focus on giving our kids real, whole foods that will fuel a long day of learning.
Totally agree, my kids eat tons of fruits and some veggies I just don’t make any sculptures out of them :).