Back to School, Back to Rhythm: How I'm Resetting Our Kitchen for Fall

Alexis Krilla

Aug 7

8 min read

Part of The Franklin Kitchen Reset Series Simple rhythms for preparing our kitchen for the week ahead.

Sunny kitchen meal prep with bread, lunch containers, blueberries, coffee, and a weekly plan notebook on a wooden table.

There's always a moment toward the end of summer when I can feel the rhythm of our house beginning to change.

Camp bags disappear from the mudroom. School emails start arriving. New shoes and backpacks find their way into closets. And suddenly, the long mornings that seemed endless in June feel very numbered.

So this week, I've been trying not to rush ahead.

I've been having my coffee on the front porch in the mornings. Letting the boys linger a little longer. Baking things slowly. Making dinner without worrying quite so much about what time it gets on the table.

It feels like one last exhale before the school year begins.

This year's transition feels especially significant for our family. When we lived in Mexico, all of our boys attended a small international Montessori school that we absolutely loved. They spent their days speaking Spanish, made friends from all over the world, and became comfortable in a wonderfully close-knit school community.

After moving to Tennessee, our older boys attended the local elementary school last year. One small luxury I didn't fully appreciate at the time? I didn't have to pack their lunches.

This year, two of the boys are heading back into a Montessori environment here in Franklin, and with that comes a new rhythm for me, too.

Every morning I'll be packing at least two lunches and four healthy snacks.

Which means I've found myself thinking less about school supplies this week and more about the refrigerator.

What can I wash and prep on Sunday so Monday morning feels easier? What can I bake that works for an afternoon snack? What foods can I keep on hand so I'm not staring into the refrigerator at 7:10 a.m. trying to invent two lunches?

And maybe most importantly: how can I prepare for a busy week without making our weekends feel busy, too?

That's really what my Franklin Kitchen Reset is becoming.

It isn't about having a perfectly organized refrigerator or spending an entire Sunday meal prepping.

It's about taking a little time before the week begins to make the kitchen feel ready for the life we're about to live in it.

This summer, that meant bowls of farmers market peaches on the counter, basil growing on the porch and pitchers of iced tea in the refrigerator.

Next week, it will look a little different.

Washed berries. Cut vegetables. Something homemade for the boys' snack boxes. A few easy lunches ready to assemble. Dinner ingredients I already know how I'm going to use.

The season is changing.

And I think our kitchen can change with it with this back-to-school kitchen reset.

Cozy brick porch with a black rocking chair, coffee mug, book, lanterns, and white flowers in warm morning light.

What Our Kitchen Needs This School Year

I'm not trying to become someone who spends an entire Sunday portioning every meal into matching containers. I know myself well enough to know that isn't a routine I'm likely to keep up with for very long.

What I do want is to take a few minutes each weekend to think about where the busy moments of the coming week are likely to happen, and prepare for those.

This year, mornings will look different for us. I'll be packing at least two lunches every day, along with four healthy snacks. We'll need easy breakfasts before everyone heads out the door, something for the inevitable after-school hunger, and dinners that don't require me to start thinking about what we're eating at 5:00 p.m.

So instead of prepping every meal, I'm focusing on making those particular moments easier.

Starting With the Lunchboxes

Open lunchbox with turkey sandwich, strawberries, cucumbers, cheese, muffin, pretzels, blueberries, and water on a bright wooden table.

Lunches are probably the biggest change for me this year.

Last year, my older boys ate lunch at school, so most mornings I didn't have to think much about what they were going to eat in the middle of the day.

This year, I'll be packing lunches again, and I'm remembering that the easiest way for me to do it is not to come up with a completely different lunch every morning.

Instead, I like to think in terms of a simple formula:

Something filling + something fresh + something crunchy + a little something fun.

That might look like a turkey and cheese sandwich with strawberries, sliced cucumbers and pretzels. Or chicken salad with crackers, blueberries and carrots. On another day, it might be Greek yogurt with homemade granola, berries and a muffin.

Nothing complicated. Just familiar foods I know they'll actually eat, with enough variety that lunch doesn't feel exactly the same every day.

I'm also trying to remember that not everything needs to be individually prepared ahead of time. If the berries are already washed, the cucumbers are sliced and there's sandwich bread in the kitchen, assembling lunch in the morning suddenly feels much more manageable.

And Then There Are the Snacks

Healthy snack spread on a wooden table with fruit, veggies, muffins, pretzels, cheese, eggs, and dips by a bright window

Four snacks a day sounds perfectly manageable until you multiply it by five school days.

Suddenly, I'm thinking about twenty snacks each week, before we've even talked about lunch.

Rather than buying twenty individually packaged snacks, I'm hoping to create a loose rotation of things I can keep stocked in the refrigerator and pantry and mix and match throughout the week.

Fresh fruit will probably do a lot of the heavy lifting: berries, grapes, apple slices, mandarins and whatever else looks good at the farmers market that week.

Then I'll rotate in things like cheese, Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, vegetables with hummus, pretzels, crackers, homemade muffins and the occasional cookie or other little treat.

I don't need twenty different ideas. I just need enough good options that I can reach into the refrigerator or pantry and put something together without thinking too hard about it.

And I'm hoping to make at least one snack each week myself.

Maybe banana bread one week, blueberry muffins the next, or a batch of homemade granola bars. There's something about having a baked-from-scratch snack tucked into their school bags that makes the whole routine feel a little more like home.

Setting Up the Refrigerator for School Mornings

One thing I've realized lately is that an organized refrigerator is only really useful if it's organized around the way your family actually eats.

So as we head back to school, I'm less interested in making the refrigerator look perfect and more interested in making it work better at 7:00 in the morning.

That means washing fruit before I put it away. Cutting a few vegetables so they're ready for lunchboxes. Keeping yogurt, cheese and other easy snacks together. Making sure the things I'm most likely to reach for on a school morning aren't hidden behind a jar of pickles somewhere in the back.

I'm not organizing the refrigerator to make it prettier. I'm organizing it to make our mornings easier.

I love the idea of having one little area of the refrigerator devoted to things I can quickly grab for lunches and snacks: washed berries, cut vegetables, cheese, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs and whatever I've made that week.

It doesn't need to be elaborate or perfectly labeled.

It just needs to save me from standing in front of an open refrigerator on Monday morning wondering what on earth I'm going to pack.

Making Dinner Easier, Too

Of course, there's no point in spending all my energy preparing beautiful lunchboxes only to realize at 5:00 Monday afternoon that I have absolutely no idea what we're having for dinner.

So part of getting our kitchen ready for school will also mean having a loose plan for the evenings.

I'm not trying to plan seven elaborate dinners. In fact, I'm finding that the more realistic I am about our week, the more helpful meal planning becomes.

Three planned family dinners feels manageable. One night can be intentionally very easy. And another can be leftovers, sandwiches, pasta, or whatever needs to be used from the refrigerator.

If I can prep one versatile protein, wash some vegetables and make one good refrigerator salad on Sunday, even better. Those few things can become lunches, sides and easy dinners throughout the week without feeling like we're eating the same meal over and over again.

The goal isn't to have every dinner cooked before Monday arrives.

It's simply to have an answer to the question, What's for dinner?

One Thing Made From Scratch

For all the talk about efficiency, though, I don't want our Sunday kitchen routine to become another list of chores.

Part of what I love about being in the kitchen is the exact opposite of efficiency.

It's making bread when I could buy it. Baking muffins with the boys. Letting something simmer on the stove. Making a batch of cookies simply because they'll be nice to find in the kitchen later.

So I'm giving myself one very unofficial rule for our school-week reset:

Make one thing from scratch.

It doesn't have to be impressive.

A loaf of our everyday sandwich bread. Banana bread. Blueberry muffins. Granola bars. Cookies. Maybe even a simple cake if it's that kind of Sunday.

Some weeks I'll have time for it and some weeks I probably won't.

But when I do, I like the idea of sending a little piece of our kitchen with the boys when they head off to school Monday morning.

What I'm Prepping for Our First Week Back

Open refrigerator packed with organized meal prep, fruit, veggies, yogurt, sauces, and labeled containers, brightly lit and tidy

For our first week of school, I'm keeping things intentionally simple.

I'm sure our routine will evolve once we're actually living it, but this is where I'm starting:

For the lunchboxes

A loaf of homemade sandwich bread
Turkey and cheese for easy sandwiches and roll-ups
Washed berries and grapes
Cut cucumbers and carrots
Hummus
Crackers and pretzels

For snacks

Greek yogurt
Cheese
Hard-boiled eggs
Fresh fruit
One homemade baked snack
A few easy pantry snacks for particularly busy mornings

For breakfast

Toast with eggs or nut butter Greek yogurt and fruit Overnight oats Something baked that can double as a school snack

For dinner

Three simple dinners I know everyone will eat One protein I can prep ahead A refrigerator salad or prepared vegetables One intentionally easy dinner One night for leftovers and whatever needs to be eaten

I'm sure there will still be mornings when someone can't find a water bottle, I've forgotten to wash the lunch containers, and we're all walking out the door five minutes later than I'd planned.

That's family life. But if there are berries washed in the refrigerator, something homemade ready for their snack bags and a plan for dinner waiting for us at the end of the day, I'll consider the kitchen ready for the week.

Blueberry muffins cooling on a rack beside a coffee mug, bowl of blueberries, and open cookbook in a cozy kitchen.

Ready for a New Rhythm

I don't want to rush these last days of summer away.

There are still tomatoes on the counter, basil on the porch and plenty of warm evenings ahead of us. But I also know that next week, our mornings will begin a little earlier and our days will have more structure again.

So this weekend, I'll wash the berries. I'll bake something for the boys' snack boxes. I'll make sure the lunch containers are ready and put a few easy dinners on the calendar.

Nothing elaborate.

Just enough to make Monday morning feel a little softer.

I think that's what I'm beginning to love most about this ritual. The Franklin Kitchen Reset isn't really about meal prep or an organized refrigerator.