A busy mom’s top 3 back-to-school tips for tight schedules
Published 1:30 am Sunday, September 2, 2018
Birds sing, sunshine splashes across the sky and the days are bathed in magic — for parents, at least. Yup, the kids are going back to school. The house will stay cleaner, the dog will be lonely and work-at-home moms like me will enjoy the blessed sound of silence.
But back-to-school season also means homework, lunch-packing and afternoon schedules that make us gasp in horror. Parents tackle difficult questions like, “How will my teenager eat dinner if he’s at sports practice from 4:30 to 7:30?” or “Which volunteer commitment should I skip since I’m triple-booked on Mondays?”
Luckily, modern parents enjoy advances that 1950s moms could only dream about. Plus, we have access to some old-timey options that June Cleaver knew well. Here are my top three back-to-school tips for busy parents. Some of them I’ve shared in this column before, but all of them bear repeating.
Download this app for your family calendar. It’s free, it’s easy, it’s fabulous. Download the Cozi App on your phone and make everyone in your family do the same. Then, when someone updates the family calendar, all of you will see the appointment. You can print weekly or monthly calendars anytime you want, and also sort schedules by person. Cozi’s list feature comes in handy for creating grocery shopping lists. Those are printable, too.
Pick up a ready-to-bake seafood dinner. Speaking of groceries, the next time you’re at a Fred Meyer or QFC, head over to the seafood counter and ask the fishmonger to make dinner for you. First you pick out your fish. Then you select your seasoning and garnish. The fishmonger will wrap it all up in an oven-ready bag, and all you have to do is put it in the oven when you get home. You pay for the fish, but everything else in the bag is free. Your options will include fresh herbs like dill, cilantro, thyme or rosemary, plus lemon slices and butter.
Order these farm-to-table meal kits for school lunches. Out of all of the meal-kit boxes I’ve ever tried, my favorite is Acme Farms and Kitchens from Bellingham. Most of their food is organic and comes from Western Washington, and their price point is low enough that it’s in alignment with the USDA’s Cost of Food at Home guidelines. Their kid boxes cost $39 and have all the fixings for nutritious, kid-friendly favorites that parents or children can assemble in minutes. There’s enough food in one box to pack both of my kids’ lunches all week, which comes out to $3.90 a lunch. That’s not much more than an Edmonds School District lunch, which costs $2.95 for my fourth-grader and $3.75 for my eighth-grader. For me, paying the extra $5.50 a week so my kids can be locavores is worth it.
Oh, September, how I’ve missed you. I’m putting on my dancing shoes and getting ready to happy-dance. I just need to make sure that the school bus has driven out of sight before I cheer.
Jennifer Bardsley publishes books under her own name and the pseudonym Louise Cypress. Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, on Twitter @jennbardsley or on Facebook as The YA Gal.
