My DS has just started Year 2 and has asked to take a packed lunch for the first time ever. Fine.
I always took a packed lunch to school myself - in primary school I had an indestructible hard shell plastic lunchbox with a character on the outside and a screw top flask that fitted securely in one half of it, food in the other half.
Do these hard lunchboxes still exist?
All the lunchboxes I can find in shops or online searches are soft bags with a bottle on the outside or not included - how does the lunch not get squashed in these? Don't they then get full of crumbs inside and impossible to clean after the first use, as you can't just rinse them under the tap and tea towel them dry instantly the way you can a thick plastic one? I am feeling slightly sick at the idea of a banana and then the open peel spending the day loose in one already.
I guess the alternative is a tupperware box from the kitchen cupboard, but I'm concerned my DS won't reliably be able to open and close the lid securely, so a couple of times a week all the rubbish will fall out of it everywhere after lunch. A tupperware also has the issue of being separate from a drinks bottle giving the opportunity to lose two things each day rather than one (they have to put their lunches on a trolley when they arrive instead of keeping them in a backpack on their peg).
Also - I had sandwiches and also veg sticks etc all lovingly wrapped in clingfilm every day for the 15 or so years of my education - I presume this isn't the done thing nowadays, so how do you transport sandwiches to school without them collapsing if they aren't clingfilmed up? I know you can get beeswax wrap things but don't they have the same issues of immediately getting manky and hard to clean as soon as they touch butter?
I did not realise it would be this/at all complicated (and I haven't got round to thinking about what stuff to put in it yet!).