Works for Me Wednesday: The Snack Basket

I’ve been doing this for years and I’m not totally sure what prompted it, but we have a “snack basket” in one of our kitchen cabinets. It holds gummies, individual bags of chips, snack cakes, etc. When I buy the snack items at the store, I bring them home and dump the individually wrapped goodies out of the box and into the basket. That way there isn’t as much cabinet clutter, and everything is in the same place.

When the kids want a snack I don’t have to say, “Do you want gummies? No? Well, how about Cheetos? No? Well, how about pretzels?” And so on. I got so tired of telling Trevor when he was younger, “Please tell me what you DO want, instead of telling me what you don’t want!” So I got in the habit of just dumping all available snacks into this big basket that is stored beyond little ones’ reach. If they are allowed to have a snack, I take the basket down, put it in front of them and tell them to pick whatever ONE thing they want. (And if I think they’ve been eating too much junk, the basket is off limits; they have to pick something from the fridge instead, which means fruit.)

Having all the snack foods in the basket also makes it a little quicker and easier to pack lunches — make a sandwich, grab a juice box, and something from the basket. Done.

Works for me!