Packing A Picnic

July is National Picnic Month and one of our favorite family activites is packing a picnic and heading to our favorite, local lake. There are often boats on this lake and we love to watch them sail around. Local college students also tend to bring their instruments and give impromptu concerts right there on the grass. We also love to watch the dogs interacting and chasing the ducks!

In our continued effort to be eco-friendly, I have a few picnic tips that will help your picnic basket stay "green," too.

-Find a few plastic plates that can be washed and reused. We have found our favorites at Target and The Dollar Tree. I'm sure there are many other sources. Pack one for everyone.
-Bring the whole package! For packaged snacks, don't make a smaller portion size for each person and waste lots of plastic sandwich bags. If everyone has their own plate, you can just pass the items out once you've arrived.
-Use Tupperware. I wash and pre-cut our fruit and put it all together into a Tupperware container. We place this on our picnic blanket and everyone helps themselves. I put all the sandwiches together into one container, the desserts together, etc.
-Use cloth napkins. You can throw them back in your basket and wash them at home.
-Invest in reusable drink bottles. We make large quantites of lemonade at our home in the summer. We each fill our own drink bottle and put it into the basket. No juice boxes, bottles or cans to throw into the trash at the park where there isn't a recycling option.

For one small investment, you can have a picnic supply basket that will last you for years. After we return home and wash up, we keep all of our supplies together and are always very excited to pull the basket out and pack it up each time we are able to go.

I hope you're able to fit in a family picnic soon!

-Julie

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