Simple Tips To Get Organized And Make Fixing Lunches Easier

There is nothing worse than running late in the morning and then desperately trying to figure out something you can put in your children’s lunch boxes. If you find yourself flustered, or end up buying school lunch because packing it seems like too much of a hassle, take a look at the tips below. They will help you get organized so fixing lunches becomes quick and easy. 

 

Start With A List And Go Shopping 

 

Start by sitting down with your kids and come up with a list of lunches they like. This could include sandwiches and wraps, or even homemade lunch-able, but it doesn’t have to stop there. If you add a thermos to the mix, you can suddenly pack reheated leftovers, homemade soup and the likes. The key is to find lunch foods and snacks that your kids will eat that are also easy to pack. 

 

Make sure you have appropriate containers, and then head to the grocery store to pick up everything you need for the week. Don’t forget about snacks and drinks as needed. The list should make this much easier. Once you have several different lunch ideas your kids like and will actually eat, you can simply rotate through them and make the ingredients part of your weekly shopping trips. 

 

Prep What You Can As Soon As You Get Home 

 

When you get home from the store, keep lunch foods out and see what you can do to prep things ahead of time. Instead of putting that bag of grapes away, go ahead and wash and store them in little bags you can grab and toss in the lunch box. The same goes for things like carrots and even salads. Slice cheese as needed and just thing about what you can prep as soon as you get home. 

 

Pack Lunches The Night Before 

 

Mornings are busy and not always the perfect time to have to worry about packing lunches. Try making them the night before. Try packing them after dinner at night. Get the kids involved and have them help with lunch prep and clean-up after. You can store cold items in the fridge and have everything else sitting in the lunch box ready to go. It won’t take you long to get into a rhythm of preparing lunches while you’re cleaning up after dinner. You’ll appreciate this new habit in the mornings when all you need to do is grab a couple of things from the fridge and toss them in the lunch boxes. 

 

Get In The Habit Of Cleaning Lunch Boxes As Soon As The Kids Get Home

 

To make lunch prep even easier, get the kids into the habit of cleaning out their lunch box as soon as they get back from school. Even the youngest can help with this. Have them toss any uneaten food and bring the containers to the sink to be washed. Older children can easily clean their own containers, while you’ll probably have to do the washing for your youngest. Having everything clean and ready to go will make it easier to pack the new lunches later on in the day. 

 

Stick to these tips and it won’t take you long to get into an efficient lunch packing routine that will make it a snap. Don’t forget to get the kids involved and put them in charge of much of the preparations. Not only will this make your live easier in the long run, it will give them a sense of ownership over their lunch. 

How To Pack School Lunches That Your Kids Will Actually Eat

Summer is coming to an end and school is about to start. That of course means it’s time to get back into a school year routine. Part of that routine in many households is packing school lunches. Packed lunches are a great option when your child isn’t too fond of what the school has to offer or you want a little more control over what your child is eating. 

 

Of course, if your child has dietary restrictions or food allergies, packing lunches is a must. Frankly, packing a lunch allows you to include healthy foods your child will actually eat and it doesn’t have to cost any more than what you would be paying for lunch at school. 

 

Packing a lunch every day doesn’t do any good if your child doesn’t eat it or ends up trading most of it away for junk food. The key then is to find things that your child loves and enjoys eating. 

 

The best place to start is to get your child involved. Depending on the age of your kids, you could even put them in charge of making their own lunches. Not only do you know that they’ll pack something they will eat, being in charge of packing lunch will teach them responsibility. 

 

Start by talking to your kids about what they want in their lunch box. Make a list of options and then head to the store so you have everything you need for the first week of school. Getting the kids as involved as possible will make sure that they end up with lunches they will eat. For older kids that may mean making their own lunches (under your supervision of course). 

 

Younger children can help. Even your kindergartener can wash grapes and put them into a container, or pick a snack for his lunch box. Get in the habit of making lunches together the night before. Over time you can give the kids more and more responsibility for their lunches. This alone will help make sure they eat what they’ve packed. After all, it’s the lunch they made. Along the way you’re teaching them independence and important life skills. 

 

Finally, you want to encourage your kids to pack and eat healthy foods. Insisting on all healthy, organic food options all the time may not be your best strategy though. Strike a balance and make compromises. If your kids pack and eat a healthy wrap or salad for example, let them have some cookies for dessert. Teach them to make good choices, but don’t freak out if they decide to pack some Cheetos or a pack of Oreo cookies. Your goal is to get them to eat fairly healthy and make smart food choices, not restrict all access to junk food, causing them to trade with friends for forbidden Twinkies. 

Pizza Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1/4 Cup Sugar
• 1 tsp. Each Salt and Dried Basil
• 1 Cup Cheddar Cheese, cubed
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Cup Yogurt
• 1/4 Cup Butter, melted
• 1/4 Cup Pizza Sauce
• 1/2 Cup Mozzarella, shredded

 

Directions:

 

Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, and basil. Stir in cheddar cubes.

 

In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt and butter until smooth. Stir into flour mixture just until well combined and no dry spots remain. Add batter into muffin cups, dividing evenly. Spoon 1 tsp. pizza sauce on top of each muffin; sprinkle each with shredded mozzarella.

 

Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted in center of one of middle muffins comes out clean. Let muffins cool in the pan for at least 5 minutes before removing, then let cool completely on a wire rack. (Freeze muffins in an airtight container for up to 1 month; defrost at room temperature.)

 

Sides:

 

• Spinach salad with dressing
• Fruit punch

Mini Calzones

Ingredients:

 

• 1 Roll Your Favorite Biscuits 
• 1/2 Ricotta Cheese 
• 2 Cups Shredded Mozzarella
• 2 tsps. Grated Parmesan Cheese
• Dash Salt 
• Dash Garlic Powder

 

Directions:

 

Open the biscuits and roll each one out flat with a rolling pin. If the dough sticks to the rolling pin take a little bit of flour and sprinkle over the rolling pin. 

 

For each biscuit add a 1/4 tsp. of Parmesan cheese onto one half of the flattened biscuit. Then add 3 Tbsps. of mozzarella and a tsp. of ricotta. Sprinkle with a little salt and garlic powder. Fold the biscuit over on itself. Crimp with a fork. 

 

Cook at 350F for 14-17 minutes or until the biscuit is golden brown. 

 

Sides:

 

• Spaghetti sauce for dipping
• Green salad with dressing
• Iced tea

Ham & Mozzarella Sticks

 

Ingredients:

 

• 4 Ham Slices
• 2 String Cheese Sticks
• 2 Green Olives
• 2 Toothpicks

 

Directions:

 

Take two ham slices and wrap around one cheese stick. Add the olive to the seam and secure with the toothpick. 

 

Serves: 1

 

Sides:

 

• Red Seedless Grapes
• Mini Pretzels
• 100% Real Juice Box

 

Italian Sausage & Broccoli Egg Muffins

Ingredients:

 

• 1 lb. Italian Sausage
• 8 Large Eggs
• 1 Cup Broccoli Florets
• 1/2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil
• 1/4 Cup Milk
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
• Salt & Pepper to Taste
• Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese

 

Directions:

 

In a large pan, fry up the sausage until it’s no longer pink.  Remove from heat and add broccoli florets

 

In a medium bowl whisk together eggs, milk, oil, baking powder and salt and pepper.

 

Lightly spray a 12 cup muffin pan with oil. Spoon the sausage mixture evenly into each tin. Pour the egg mixture over the top and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

 

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 375 F

 

Refrigerate lunch portions overnight and add to lunch box in the morning. It’s portable and yummy!

 

Sides:

 

• Jello with fruit at the bottom
• Apple slices
• Milk

Banana Burrito Ideas

Peanut Butter & Jelly

 

• Whole-Wheat Tortilla
• 2 Tbsps. Peanut Butter
• Banana
• 1 Tbsp. Jelly

 

Nutella and Peanut Butter

 

• Tortilla
• 2 tbsp. Peanut Butter
• Banana
• 1 tbsp. Nutella 

 

Fluffer Nuttier Roll-Up 

 

• Tortilla
• 2 tbsp. Peanut Butter
• Banana
• 1 tbsp. Marshmallow Fluff

 

Directions:

 

Spread peanut butter over the tortilla. Peel banana and put it at the edge of the tortilla. Spread the banana with your optional topping (jelly, Nutella, marshmallow fluff) and then roll up the tortilla.  Fold the ends to hold all the ingredients inside.  For a yummy alternative warm up the tortilla in the microwave for 10-15 seconds for an ooey gooey treat.

 

Pair with these items to make a delicious lunch your child will love:

• Fruit cup
• Yogurt
• Non-sugary drink like Water, Bai, or Crystal Light

Develop A Game Plan For The Future

We touched a little at the end of yesterday’s blog post on the whole idea of moving forward and continuing to improve our email marketing game. Trust me, there’s always room for improvement, for anyone, including me. While an audit like this is a great way to update and improve things, it’s just as important to keep an eye on things and tweak them more regularly going forward. At the same time, it’s easy to put this task on the back burner and focus on new and exciting or more urgent tasks instead. That’s why it’s important to make a plan to keep improving your auto-responder going forward. 

 

Let’s start by looking at some of the things we already talked about. It’s a good idea to review your lead magnet and consider changing it out every three to six months. Go ahead and put that on the calendar. As previously mentioned, you also want to continue to add new auto-responder messages to the list. You can either set aside a particular day of the week to do that, or work on it in larger batches. Let’s say you’re going to add one new email message per week. You could put it on the calendar as a weekly activity that gets done every Tuesday morning for example. Or, if you prefer to work in batches, you could set aside a day every couple of months where you write and add 3 months’ worth of emails. Find a rhythm that works for you and then get in the habit of doing it regularly. 

 

Next, I want to share three other tasks related to list building and email marketing that you want to plan on doing regularly going forward. They are all important as is everything we’ve talked about so far. Make them a priority, put them on the calendar and get it done. Your list and your business will grow that much faster when you do. 

 

The first thing is to make it a habit to look at your opt-in stats. We talked in earlier posts about how much you can learn from them. Look at open rates and unsubscribes in particular. The most important stat for your bottom line is of course how many people take you up on your offers. Study any email offers or solo emails that are converting well for you and try to do more along those lines. 

 

Next, you want to look at your opt-in conversion rates. Play around with your opt-in forms and pages, the placement of the forms, the copy etc. and see if you can get that percentage to go up. Most auto-responder services give you the ability to split test your forms and pages. Take advantage of that. Set up tests and always have one running. Continue to try to beat your previous conversion rate. 

 

Last but not least consider setting up different opt-in funnels. You can target specific subsets of your target audience with special funnels designed just for them. This allows you to speak directly to them and their particular needs. Of course, you could also go wide by setting up a funnel on a related topic that your current readers may also be interested in. Continue to grow your list by setting up new funnels and new auto responders on a regular basis. 

Are Your Messages Serving You And Making You Money?

 

In the last blog post, we looked at the messages in the auto-responder sequence to make sure they are serving our audience. Today we’re going to go through that list again, but this time we’re making sure they also serve us and help us make money. Remember what I mentioned yesterday about taking care of our audience and only providing offers that add value to ensure long-term growth. Today is all about getting more people to look at those quality offers and taking us up on them. 

 

Your best friend here is the analytics data from your auto-responder service and anything else you measure like click through on affiliate links etc. You may even want to dig around Google Analytics and see what helpful data you can find there. Setting up goals for example is a good idea to see what’s working and where in a funnel you’re losing people. 

 

I find it helps to track three different metrics when it comes to this. The first if of course the open rate. If your subscribers don’t even bother to open your emails, you need to do something. Start by looking at the subject line and see what you can do to improve it. If that doesn’t work, it may be a problem with the subject matter. In that case, I suggest replacing the message with something different. 

 

The second metric you want to keep an eye on is click through rate for any links in your email messages. If you’re not getting clicks, chances are that you’re either not writing a strong enough call to action or that the content and/or offer isn’t all that interesting to your readers. In either case that’s something you want to fix. Go back to what you’ve learned about your audience and what interests them and what they need to solve their problems. Craft the offers and content with them in mind. Keep going back to the questions of what they need to know and what they need next that we talked about in yesterday’s post. 

 

The third metric you want to take a look at is unsubscribes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you panic and delete messages anytime you see someone unsubscribe. Instead, I want you to look at the big picture here. You will always have some people unsubscribe from your list at various points in the message sequence. What you want to look for is spikes in unsubscribes at a particular message. Look at those emails. Is the topic different from what you usually share? Did you try to sell your readers too hard on a product you love? Rework those messages, toning down the copy, or even replacing it with something that’s better suited (either product or content) to your target audience and see if you can improve those stats. 

 

There’s a lot you can learn from your stats and from what your readers tell you. Start to pay attention, start to listen, and start to take action going forward. You’ll find yourself becoming a better and better email marketer as time goes by. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s really about isn’t it? It’s about finding your audience, serving them, and making a comfortable living in the process.