Back-to-school season is here, which means parents get to add another fun item to the daily checklist: “Wait… did I pack their lunch?”
According to a new report, parents spend a whopping 432 hours during the school year planning meals, grocery shopping, cooking and packing lunches. That works out to about 12 hours every week devoted to keeping everybody fed. Basically, it’s a part-time job… except your “coworkers” complain about the crust being left on.
And school lunches may be the toughest part. Parents say the biggest challenges are finding foods their kids will actually eat, keeping things interesting and avoiding food waste, because nothing hurts quite like opening that lunchbox after school and discovering the $7 worth of food you lovingly packed this morning is still sitting there untouched.