How do lunchboxes work nowadays?!

[BestZebbie]

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!).

Sistema box in a neoprene bag for primary dc. I wash the box out every night and it dries overnight on a tea towel. The neoprene bag I hand wash (1 min) on a Friday and hang on the line.

Teens take a bog standard small plain storage box that fits in their bag. They wash their own box out and fill it themselves in the morning. I let them sort it out because it’s not cool having your mum cut up veggies etc when you’re at secondary school.

On what grounds?! (about not being allowed bags other than the bookbag(

Where I work it’s because we don’t have space for big bags it’s as simple as that. The children bring in a PE kit at the start of term and that stays in school until half term break. The book bag is big enough for their homework and any letters. They don’t need (and are actively discouraged) to bring anything else to school.

Insulated lunch bag here. Individual items like sandwich, cheese cubes, carrot sticks and apple slices are in small tupperware boxes inside it.

@LadyDanburysCane

On what grounds?! (about not being allowed bags other than the bookbag(

Where I work it’s because we don’t have space for big bags it’s as simple as that. The children bring in a PE kit at the start of term and that stays in school until half term break. The book bag is big enough for their homework and any letters. They don’t need (and are actively discouraged) to bring anything else to school.

This is what DC's school say but despite banging on weekly about how it's better to walk/cycle/scoot to school they don't seem to understand that the required book bags, lunch bags, water bottles, weekly wellies and any other requested essentials for often several children all need carrying somehow.

Mine aren't allowed to throw anything from their lunch away at school!

Mine weren't at primary, it was fairly handy as you knew what they were eating (or not eating!). Only annoyance was making sure yogurt pots and banana skins went back in the box not the insulated bag. I ended up decanting yogurts into a lidded pot (Sistema again - they are getting a lot of free advertising today!).

Packed lunches are the bane of my life, the smell, the stickiness, lost spoons…
Ds has a sistema bento style one so need for plastic sandwich bags or beeswax wraps which I can’t be fucking arsed rinsing in cold water every day and then leaving somewhere to dry - his plastic lunchbox goes in the dishwasher every night.
However, your child won’t be ostracised if you dare use a sandwich bag or cling film!
I bought the paper sandwich bags from Lakeland recently and I’m planning on taking my sandwich to work in it to test it out.
I have a bit of a hatred of sweaty lunchboxes and my youngest is going into year 5 this year, I told him year 5 is when he needs to take over the responsibility of packing his own lunch

My DC have the ‘hard’ shall type - plain ones from Amazon. I put them in the dishwasher.

(I remember my friends had My Little Pony ones with matching flasks back in the 90s! As a school dinner kid I was so jealous)

My just about to go into year one DS has a yumbox, it’s the smaller one called something like panini?? It goes into his insulated lunch bag with an ice pack and he carries that with his water bottle tucked into the side although he wants to take a backpack this year so I think it will just go in there.

I love the yumbox! I don’t have time for any fancy cutting shapes into babybel wax or jigsaw shaped melon pieces like some of the Instagrammers do but I like being able to fill the box with things that don’t need to be wrapped up or things that he will struggle to open.

We use the soft ones with a hard plastic bento or tupperware box inside. I wipe them down inside and out. Then every now and then I give them a proper full soak in the sink.

A cloth bag but with little plastic containers inside, like mini tuppawear. It won’t get squashed but will done home disgusting with yoghurt stains etc. Shove it in the dish washer is usually enough to clean it but by the end of the year the bag usually walks itself to the bin.

As a nursery nurse I used to tell parents to use foil because kids find cling film much harder to open by themselves. You don't want them waiting for help.