I refuse to buy my kid a new lunch box just because it's a new year

"Mum, I neeeed this lunch box," Tash's daughter pleaded. Do your kids try to emotionally blackmail you to upgrade all their gear at the start of every school year?

Natasha Lee

2 min read

January 24, 2024 - 12:58PM

Parenting

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As we walked through ALDI the other day, my daughter grabbed my hand and dragged me towards the centre aisle.

Mum, she insisted. I need this lunch box.

I stood there gazing at the one she'd selected, and then glanced back at her puppy dog eyes. I asked her why she needed this lunch box when she had a perfectly good one at home that, frankly, cost a pretty penny last year.

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"There's a good lunch box at home"

“Because” she stammered the way kids do when they know they've been caught out. "Because ... Hannah has one".

I looked at her and shook my head.

"Sweetheart, that's not a good enough reason to get a new one. You've got a perfectly good lunch box at home," I said, and braced for impact.

As expected, she was not happy. I was being "so unfair”. But I stood firm. This was the hill I was prepared to die on.

Image: Natasha Lee

"It's not just the cost"

I'm not into buying things we don't need. Why does last December's lunch box need replacing eight weeks later? It hasn't even been used in that time!

But also... think of the plastic.

Don't get me wrong - my daughter has a lot of toys. A lot of plastic toysthat she really wanted at the time but ended up playing with, maybe, once or twice.

Our entire loungeroom is littered with toys, thrown askew into boxes that now just gather dust.

This year, I'm determined to make a change.

God knows we’ve already got a chronic problem with plastic in this country. A global comparison of plastics waste management* placed Australia 7th among 25 nations for its overall efforts to control plastic pollution.

Call me Taylor Swift, but it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it’s me in this case.

I should have said 'no' to plastics from the start; but I wanted to my first born to be happy.

But standing there in ALDI, I wanted my daughter to know that having things for the wrong reasons isn't all that satisfying. Not only is it wasteful, and unsustainable - I'm worried we're turning our kids into mini addicts with FOMO their drug of choice.

It's a slippery slope that might just start with a lunchbox but soon it’ll be about clothes, and then gadgets and everything in between. I don’t want that for her. I know I can’t totally prevent her forever from trying to keep up with The Joneses, but I can, at least, try to delay her entrance into the race.