Snack Bins

SO I am totally in LOVE with Pinterest! It is completely addicting and has the BEST ideas for EVERYTHING! I have been so inspired with all of the things I have found on there and will be posting things as I try them out! The first thing I did was make Snack Bins for Cody. The more I can let him do for himself not only helps him create some independence, but also helps me! One thing I started doing was putting Cody’s cup and some cheese squares on the fridge shelf (where he could reach) so that if I was nursing Grayson or laying him down he could get it himself. THEN I saw this post on Pinterest and thought… why didn’t I think of that?!

Make your own Snack Bins for the kids so that they can make a choice of what they want, BUT they are choosing from snacks that you are allowing them to eat. WIN-WIN! I made a “fridge snack bin” and a “dry snack bin”.

Dry Snack Bin: I filled this with all of Cody’s dry snacks (dried fruit, Applesauce Squeezers, veggie straws, Annie’s cracker snacks, fruit leather, gold fish, cheerios, ZBars, Crackers, Pretzels etc. I put some bowls in there too so that he (or I) can fill his bowl from one of the ziplocs of snacks.

Pantry Snack BIn

Fridge Snack Bin: The idea from Pinterest had some yummy PB, cheese sticks, fruit and veggies. Instead of filling mine with all the “fridge snacks” we eat, I decided to just fill it with veggies (and salad dressing for dipping). We always eat fruit with every meal and unless we have veggies mixed in our meals, Cody won’t choose a veg over a fruit. So I figured this would help him to eat more veggies for snacks instead of fruit.

Fridge Snack Bin

Since I made the snack bins, I let Cody rotate between each bin so if he has had a dry snack and asks for something else, he has to choose from his veggie bin. He loves that he gets to pick his snack and get it out himself. I love that since I started this, he has been eating a ton more veggies… AND it saves me time because I cut up a bunch of veggies at the beginning of the week to put in his bin and don’t have to do it again until it runs out!

Like I said… this snack bin thing has been a WIN-WIN! My next thing I want to do is a Kids Pantry!! Oh the possibilities!!