How To Use Ball® Jars to Meal Prep and Simplify Your Mornings

This post is brought to you by the makers of Ball® home canning products.*

The one thing that I will never claim to be is a food blogger and sharing recipes or tips on cooking is certainly not the norm around here (okay the occasional smoothie or turmeric latte might pop up but not much else). However, the one thing I do know is organization and using organization to simplify lives. I love sharing little tips and tricks on how to improve your daily life through organization.

This month, I partnered with the makers of Ball® home canning products to show you how to use Ball® jars to meal prep and simplify your mornings. With two teenage daughters at home there are more things than I can count that are outside of my control but having a good system in place for meal prep helps eliminate one of them and create order for our mornings.

I have shared in the past all about the importance of a good morning routine and how eliminating chaos from your morning can help your whole day go more smoothly. If you remember those posts, one aspect of morning routines that I always talk about is food, everything from breakfasts to lunches to even streamlining dinner prep. Having a good system in place for your daily meals is priceless in terms of morning routine success and I couldn’t ask for a better tool to support the food portion of your morning routine than Ball® jars.

Why I Love Ball® Jars for Meal Prep

One of the reasons that I love Ball® jars, all throughout the house, is their incredible versatility and that amazing versatility is no different when using the jars for meal prep. Ball® jars are a wonderful tool for meal preparation because they come in such a wide variety of sizes (more on that in a bit with the different ways to use Ball® jars). The jars also have a selection of lid types from screw on lids to flip tops so you can pick what is best for you, the dish you are making and your family.

Additionally, I love that Ball® jars are a wonderful plastic-free option for food storage. As you may remember, I have Hashimoto’s Disease and have been working on eliminating toxins, including most plastics, from my family’s life. These jars are a great option for me that allow me the ease of a to-go food container without feeling like I am sacrificing on convenience.

Finally, Ball® jars can be used as both the storage container in your fridge or pantry and the vessel to eat out of in the morning or for lunch which saves on dishes. And I know that any moms or dads reading this are applauding the thought of less dishes.

How to Use Ball® Jars for Meal Prep

I will spare you any recipes (there are a lot of experts for that) but I wanted to pass along some of my favorite ways to use Ball® jars for meal prep and what specific jars our family uses for each element.

• Overnight oats are such an easy to prepare dish and a great healthy breakfast option for my girls. I use the Ball® Wide Mouth Pint for overnight oats, which are the perfect portion size and easy to grab and eat in the morning.

• Another breakfast option that we love around our house is yogurt and granola. We use the Ball® 16oz Regular Mouth Jars for these to give us a little bit more room but still perfectly easy to pack or eat during carpool.

• If you have been on Pinterest at all in the past 5 years you have likely seen the amazing trend that is salad in a jar but there is a reason that trends stick. I absolutely love the ease of prepping a bunch of salads for the week all at once and then grabbing them each day. There are so many delicious recipes out there that you can mix it up while still keeping the routine and ease of meal prepping your salads. Whether you add the dressing at the last minute or put it at the bottom of the jar, all you need to do is shake and you have a delicious healthy lunch. For the salads, I like the Ball® 32oz Wide Mouth Jars so there is lots of room for a nice big salad.

• I like using a few different sized jars to store kids snacks for the week. The Ball® 16oz Regular Mouth Jars can be great for something like peanut butter and celery or the Ball® Collection Elite Jars for creating individual servings of crackers or nuts.

• Finally, either the Ball® 32oz Wide Mouth Jars or Ball® 24oz Regular Mouth Jars are perfect for storing cut veggies and fruits. I like the Ball® 32oz Regular Mouth Jars for keeping things like asparagus or carrots fresh in water so they are ready to be chopped up for dinner or the Ball® 24oz Regular Mouth Jars for items I meal prepped over the weekend and they are just waiting to be tossed up for dinner like cooked pasta or cut fruit.

As you can see there are countless ways that you can use Ball® jars to meal prep for your family and streamline your morning routine. The most important thing is to select what works for you, what your family will eat and what you will actually carry through in prepping for the next day or week ahead. However you decide to incorporate Ball® jars into your routine I know it will help bring calm and order to your home’s mornings.

TELL ME: what is your favorite tip for streamlining your family’s morning routine?

*Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that is part of an ongoing partnership with the Fresh Preserving Division of Newell Brands. They have provided jars, equipment and monetary compensation. All thoughts and opinions expressed remain my own.