Snack Station Micro Challenge
Is it us or has quarantine become synonymous with snack time?
If your people are in your pantry day in and day out, asking for food, moving things around, and eating their way through your supplies, a designated snack station may be just what you need to reinstate order and reign in the chaos.
COMPLETE THE CHALLENGE :
Follow these 10 tips for creating a snack station that’s guaranteed to please your people (and keep you sane in the process!).
Get your questions answered! For the next 2 days (Thursday, September 10th & Friday Septemeber 11th), our co-founder, Christina Lee, will kick things off with Instagram Live & Facebook Stories. She’ll answer questions, set goals, help troubleshoot tricky issues, and weigh in with her expert advice for working through each of the daily assignments.
Make sure to set your IG alerts so you don’t miss a thing! (Go to our GS profile> Following > Notifications 🌸)
Pull all of the snacks out of your kitchen and pantry.
This includes that high-up Halloween candy, the biscotti near the coffee pot, the kids’ snacks down low and mom’s snacks tucked up high.
Consider your grocery list—are any of your family’s favorite items missing?
If so, use a sticky note as a placeholder (e.g., “Pirates Booty”) to ensure you reserve space for key foods.
Categorize your inventory by type and size.
Put your bars together, your packets together, your pouches together, etc. Because we’re working on a small zone today, stacks will suffice, however, if your categories start blending together, grab a few Amazon boxes or baskets you have around the house and use those to keep your inventory organized.
If you’ve been with us for a while or have done a previous Graceful Spaces challenge, you’ll know we love using clear plastic bins for sorting (and you can use the same bins as you work through every space in your home!).
Edit for expiration date.
Toss anything that’s expired and take note of what remains.
Consider the trends that are emerging.
Is there one flavor of popcorn that nobody eats?
Did six of the eight Kind bars expire because nobody liked the taste?
Is there more junk food than you realized and fewer healthy options (perhaps unintentionally sabotaging some health goals?).
Observe the data before you and determine
what you’d like to change for the future.
Determine your snack station placement.
If you’ve got littles, and you want to empower them to serve themselves, put your station at their height, within their arm’s reach—generally one of the lower two pantry shelves.
If space is tight, you can move your setup to a kitchen drawer or a bar cart in the homeschool room.
Zone your space.
Chaos comes when you try to combine several different categories (if you’ve ever had a general “Snack” bin, you’ll know what we mean). The more you micro-categorize, the more successful you’ll be in establishing a system that will last for the long haul. The key is to ensure every category has a clear and distinct place.
We’ll say it again, chaos comes
when you try to combine several different categories
Make your product shopping list!
No need to overthink it: packets, pouches and bars go into packer organizers. Family-sized chip bags and personal-sized snack bags go into larger bins or baskets. Decant into canisters the items you use on a steady rotation: nuts, dried fruit, crackers.
For chip & popcorn bags!
For pouches, bars & small snacks!
For those staple favorites!
Label your station.
This is an easy step to skip, but it’s essential to reinforcing placement and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
You will be loving your labels when your kids put away the groceries unsupervised and everything winds up where it belongs.
PS If you’re using custom vinyl labels , make a temporary set with painters tape to keep your system in place until the permanent labels arrive.
Help your kids set healthy habits.
Communicate to your little ones the importance of responsibility. Put a snack schedule on the door, giving kids their options depending on the time of day. Allow your kids ownership of the snack station. Ask them to unload the groceries each week and do a general assessment of the station while they’re at it (refill decanted items, sweep up any crumbs, straighten containers, etc.).
we’d love to celebrate with you! comment below and let us know how it went. Or if you have any questions, we’re here for that too!
Want more? We’re kicking off a full-on guided pantry program, starting next week 9/21 - 9/22.
To sign up, purchase the Gracefully Organized Pantry Program and join our private Facebook community to go through your entire pantry organization project step-by-step, in real-time, with Christina Lee, co-founder of Graceful Spaces.
