We all know that home-prepared lunches can be much healthier than the ones provided at school, but what about the cost? School lunches are often government-subsidized, and the price can be hard to beat.

On average, lunch boxes carry over $2.00 of pre-packaged foods every day. That adds up to nearly $400 per lunchbox over the course of a school year.

There's a way to cut that cost significantly, however.

The answer: do it yourself. Don’t  buy individual-serving packages. Make your own at home and the savings will be enormous!

Try these tips for things you can to make those school lunches a snap!

Spend a Saturday with some high-quality family time assembly line work. It's fun—and it saves!

• Create your own pizza lunch kits. Toast bread and cut out little circles with a biscuit cutter. Add small containers of pizza sauce, cheese, and other toppings.
• Make other "lunchable" kits with deli meats, cheeses and crackers.
• Purchase cheese in blocks, cut into pieces and put in sandwich bags.
• Make fruit gelatin and pudding and put in small plastic containers for the week. Make a large batch of granola bars, cookies, pumpkin bread, banana bread or muffins. Divide them into zip top sandwich bags and freeze so that you can grab one or two when needed.
• Brownie bites are simple to make. Bake brownie mix in mini-muffin pans and put three "brownie bites" in a sandwich bag for each child's lunch.
• Pre-package chips, pretzels, animal crackers and other snack items in sandwich bags. Store them in a big container or basket and add them to lunch boxes in the morning.
• Pack napkins, catsup and mustard packets you get from take-out.
• Clean vegetables, slice into pieces and bag. Prepare several day's worth of fresh munchies at a time for convenience.

Published 08/29/08