With back to school upon us, it’s time to look for ways to simplify the morning rush. One task that will be returning to many of your morning to-do lists is packing school lunches. To simplify the process this year, why not put together a refrigerator mini-zone loaded with school lunch essentials. Here are some ideas for creating your own lunch-making mini-zone.

• Purchase (or repurpose) a plastic storage bin sized to fit on one of the shelves in your refrigerator.
• Load your bin with prepackaged lunch-making items such as cheese sticks, small packages of yogurt, smoothies, juice or milk.
• Once a week stock your lunch bin with items such as grapes, baby carrots, celery sticks and dip, stored in small, reusable lunch containers.
• Add sandwich-making supplies such as bread, peanut butter, jam or jelly, or lunch meats and cheese.
• Keep unrefrigerated lunch-making items like napkins, cutlery, chips, crackers and cookies in a second bin in your pantry.
• If your kids are older, assign them the task of filling their lunch bag each morning with the pre-packed items in your lunch-making mini-zone.

All that’s left to do now is step back, relax and know that one thing on your morning to-do list just got a whole lot simpler!