“Here’s what my nine kids got in their lunch today.” The line arrives over a shot of a pale blue countertop and a pair of hands setting down the first stainless steel container, with the words “Packing Lunches For 9 Kids” on screen. Then comes the menu. “It’s breakfast for lunch, starting with apple shaped waffles with Jones Dairy Farm sausage links.”
The video is from @doughertydozen, posted with the caption “What did you have for lunch today?” What follows is two minutes of assembly line packing in which one idea, apples, decides almost everything that goes in the bag.
@doughertydozen
The waffles are already made when the camera finds them. They sit on a tray in four overlapping rows, each one small and pressed into the shape of an apple, next to the box for an “Apple-A-Day” mini waffle maker and a bag of Krusteaz buttermilk mix. She lines up the steel containers in two columns on the counter, drops waffles into each, then goes down the rows with a pair of black tongs adding the sausage links.
Next comes the part that keeps a breakfast lunch from being eaten cold. She says she switched on the children’s heated lunch boxes before filling them. Each steel container is lowered into a black base and covered with a clear lid that snaps down at the sides. One shot shows a unit up close, with the name LunchEAZE across the front above a small screen and a ring of buttons. Each heated box goes into the bottom of a black insulated lunch bag, and she explains the layout as she works: she “zipped up the bottom compartment and opened the top for the rest.”
The rest goes in one item at a time, down both rows of open bags, and she names each thing as it lands. “Starting with syrup,” in a small container of its own. “Their drink today is Mott’s apple juice. Their fruit is Mott’s cinnamon applesauce.” The snack, in her words “their snacky snack,” is a bag of Bare apple chips. “Their treat is a homemade apple muffin.”
Then a backup. “And just in case they’re still hungry, I added a Quest Apple Pie bar,” she says, holding the green box up to the lens before tucking one into each bag.
Not everything is food. “Their fun surprise is an apple shaped slow rise squishy,” she says, and a red squishy toy goes in on top of the snacks. The finishing layer is practical. “Next, I put in a fork, spoon, wet wipe, breath mint, and red apple napkin, put in their penguin ice pack and zip them up.”
The last shot shows the bags closed and standing in two rows, each with a name stitched across the lid in orange thread. “That’s it for today,” she says. “Bon appetit.”
Watching how she does it is as useful as the menu. She never packs one lunch from start to finish. Every step is done across all the bags before the next step begins: all the waffles, then all the sausage, then all the lids, then all the juice. The containers are identical, the bags are identical, and they sit in the same two rows the whole time, so her hands repeat one motion until the row is done.
That is the first thing any parent can borrow, whether there are nine lunches or two. Packing by item is faster than packing by child, because each package gets opened once and each decision gets made once.
The theme does a similar job. Once the day is an apple day, the drink, the fruit, the snack, the treat and even the napkin are settled. A theme can be as simple as a colour or a single ingredient. Its value is that it replaces half a dozen small choices with one.
Her bags also solve a problem that trips up a lot of packed lunches, which is hot and cold food sharing one space. The warm waffles and sausage are sealed in the bottom compartment in their own heated box. The juice, applesauce and ice pack ride in the top. Families without heated boxes can get part of the way with an insulated food jar, warmed with hot water for a few minutes before the food goes in, and kept apart from anything that is meant to stay cool.
Breakfast for lunch is worth copying for its own sake. Small waffles can be made in one big batch, as the tray in her video shows, and they are easy for children to eat with a fork or their fingers. Sending the syrup in a separate small container, as she does, keeps them from going soggy before noon.
The non-food list is the part most often forgotten on a rushed morning: a fork, a spoon, a wet wipe and a napkin. Keeping those four things together in one drawer or bin, next to the lunch bags, turns them into a single grab.
Her “just in case they’re still hungry” item is a smart habit too. A wrapped bar that does not need to stay cold can come home untouched and go straight back in the next day, so it costs nothing when it is not needed.
And the matching gear matters more than it looks. When every container and lid is the same, nobody is hunting for the one that fits. The names on the bags mean each child can find their own without a parent sorting them at the door.
