Good afternoon! So today's Do Stuff Better project is a little thing that I'm pretty excited about, and so is Lou. At four, Lou is, of course, increasingly independent. She's taking showers (and washing her own hair!), we're ditching the stroller and walking to school together (which, by the way, is a much more bond-inducing experience that I'm really enjoying, even if it does increase our travel time by 35% or so), and she gets herself dressed and ready for her day or for bed. We're thrilled, if a bit nostalgic for times past. The last frontier: food. She frequently comes to me and declares she's hungry, and sometimes that happens at 5 am. Things came to a head this week when, at said 5 am, I assured her I'd be up any minute, but she, perhaps sensing that "any minute" would be hours away, went ahead and dragged her step stool to the cabinet and got herself some cereal without me. Which was fine, but seems rife with risk of various sorts. Plus, she's old. I offer her choices of snack when she's hungry anyway (though not for dinner: we eat what we're having, but that's another post), so it seems like I might as well set things up so she can be large and in charge. And so I did.

I went ahead and set up two zones, because some of the stuff wasn't suitable for the fridge (bananas) or the pantry (milk). The reason I say these are healthier and eco-friendlier (than what?), is because I've seen kid snack zones around, on the Internet and in real life, and they seem to depend a lot on purchased snack-sized portions. Which is fine (no judgment if that's your jam), but it's not our jam, so I wanted to make things that were accessible to Lou but that wouldn't involve a lot of trash, expense or too much over-processed stuff.

In the fridge, I've got milk and water, which I tend to keep filled up and in the fridge throughout the day already, chickpeas, yogurt (I buy plain and add in jelly or honey), homemade chocolate almond protein bars, cut up carrot and cucumber sticks, and, in the reusable pouches, applesauce. For future snack zones, I plan to introduce seasonal veggies, pickles, edamame, cheese slices and refrigerated fruit, like grapes. Plus whatever Lou requests that fits the parameters.

Kid pantry zone for snacks they can get themselves

In the pantry zone, in addition to the food, I stocked Lou's plastic dishes and some silverware, so she can access everything at one time. Food-wise, here's what I provided:

Snacks we started off with here include some trail mix, raisins, roasted seaweed, graham crackers and bananas. I also provided cereal for Lou, for those 5 am hunger pangs. She doesn't pour milk in her cereal - she prefers to eat it dry with a spoon, and drink her milk separately - so this all should work out pretty well. Future snack options will probably include crackers, bagel chips, granola bars, more dried, freeze-dried and fresh fruit, and whatever else we can come up with.

I'm most interested in seeing how Lou handles the sort of meta decision making - whether she'll save up graham crackers for a special time or if they'll disappear rapidly and we'll be dealing with tears when there are only chickpeas left. And I'm hoping that these snacks are enough for the week, but it'll be interesting to calibrate that, as well. Finally, I have visions of Lou packing her own lunch dancing in my head: once we get comfortable with this, there's no reason she can't pick a few different foods from different zones (maybe I'll color code veggies, fruits, proteins, carbs and have her choose one from each group?) and dictate what she wants to eat. Lastly, I'm not sure yet if I'll let her choose a snack option over dinner if we're having something she doesn't like. My inclination is no - she'd subsist on cereal if I let her - but we'll see. I do like giving her autonomy, and I hate the idea of food wars.

I did make a purchase for this zone: the two clear candy-like jars I'm keeping the cereal in. Those are from Marshall's, and are Oxo brand, and I liked that they're plastic, Lou's size, and that the lids are wide enough that Lou can dip her bowl in to serve herself. In general, I'm not crazy about plastic, and some of the dishes Lou uses, and which I provided in her zone, are glass, but it seemed wise to go ahead and go with plastic for the cereal function, since they're otherwise so ideal. If you're interested in any products you see, I did a rundown of eco-friendly thins we use in the kitchen, nearly all of which are featured in the snack zones, that you can check out here.

That's it! If you do a version of this, I'd love to hear about it - and if there are pitfalls and snags you've run into or reasons you decided against it, I'm all ears on that, as well. Thanks as always for reading, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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