How I Clean My Child's Fabric Lunch Box

Your kid takes that soon to be not so brand-new lunch box off to school every morning with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, fruit, and whatever else you pack. At lunch time in the cafeteria, the lunch box gets abused, dropped, spilled on, splattered on, and eaten out of. That means it comes home a little grimy, smeared with peanut butter from the school lunch perhaps.

And nobody wants to eat out of a dirty lunch box. Nor is a dirty lunch box particularly sanitary.

Cleaning my child's dirty lunch box starts with reading the care instructions. Often, the label on insulated fabric lunch boxes says to "surface clean" them only. That means wiping them down with a damp sponge.

For daily cleaning, that's often what I do. It can be helpful to use a little mild dish soap and hot water on the sponge as well. That gets off the smeared-on peanut butter. Once the lunch box is clean, I let the fabric lunch box dry on my dish rack.

Sometimes, my kid's fabric lunch box is just too dirty for "surface clean only."

When that happens, I hand wash it or put it in the washing machine on the gentle cycle. I use a mild laundry detergent, such as Tide Special Care or Woolite, and wash in cold or cool water on the delicate cycle. When the wash cycle is done, I hang the fabric lunch box up to dry on my clothes line. If your lunch box has heavy zippers, velcro, or other abrasive fabrics or trim, don't wash it with knits, lingerie, or delicate fabrics.