How I Store Berries To Make It Easier For My Kids
When my husband and I first got married, our grocery haul looked so differently from how it does now. I remember once buying milk at a gas station because between the two of us we weren’t even going to drink a half gallon before it went bad. These days, with 3 kids between the ages of 6 and 1, we’re buying two gallons of milk every week, and milk isn’t the only part of our grocery list that has doubled or tripled.
Fruit is another item that we exclusively buy in bulk at this point. My kids can eat through a container of strawberries in a matter of days. And the thing is, I’d rather they choose that as their snack over the goldfish we keep in the pantry.
This summer, when our youngest was still an infant, I found that my older kids were going to the pantry for goldfish and fruit snacks more than they were for fruit. It would be time for a snack, and I would be tied up with the baby. So rather than asking me to grab them some berries from the fridge, they would take it upon themselves to get their snacks. My middle would drag a step stool to the pantry, my oldest would fish snacks from the box and open them, and together they would sit and eat their snacks. In moments like these, it was harder for them to get fruit out of the fridge, because they would inevitably spill or have trouble opening the plastic fruit containers. After a few failed attempts at getting fruit on their own, they gave up.
So one weekend, I tried storing our berries in a different way. When we got home from the grocery store, I dumped the berries into the spaghetti strainer, washed them off, patted them dry, and then put them in the tupperware containers I usually use to store our gumbo. This made it easier for my kids to grab them out of the fridge and bring them to the counter or the table without spilling. And the tops are easy to pop open.
