5 College Care Package Tips for Parents

20 May 5 College Care Package Tips for Parents

Whether your child goes to a college, you will probably want to send care packages every once and a while. Of course, even if your child is going to school in your home state, you will probably drive a care package over to the dorms. Sure, this may be embarrassing for your son or daughter, but it will be appreciated later, especially when your child is missing home or simply needs to snack on something during finals week. Indeed, care packages are called care packages for a reason.

Before you give your son or daughter a care package, you want to be sure that you consider several factors. You don’t want to simply throw something together; you need to have at least some degree of forethought.

Here are five college care package tips for parents.

1. Avoid including too much Liquid 

Many post offices these days have ways to know if there are liquids in a package. For security concerns as well as limiting the damage to other items in your care package, many post office workers confiscate or return packages with liquid. If you don’t want your package to get tossed, you want to minimize the amount of liquid.

2. Use a Simple Box 

Ideally, you want to send the package in a simple box without strange angles. You aren’t sending the care package to a newlywed couple, so it doesn’t need to be fancy. In the box, you want to put a lot of packing peanuts to protect what’s inside. If there are too many angles on the package, you may wind up with broken edges, damaged goods, or other problems.

3. Include Healthy Snacks 

Ideally, you want to plant some healthy items in the care package. These healthy items don’t need to be too blatant; you may only want to add a few bags of mixed nuts or some trail mix. Trail mix is great because it has a mix of nuts and candy. The candy, of course, is not good for anyone, but the nuts add good protein and will help when your child is studying for finals.

4. Don’t Include any Valuables 

If you put anything in the care package that could break, you could have a serious mess on your hands. Not only could the items break during the delivery, but they could also break in the dorm. A lot of college students don’t take great care of their stuff or the constant traffic in and out of their room may cause items to fall or break. If you have any valuables that you think would be good for the package, simply refrain.

5. Consider Travel Temperature 

As much as your child may enjoy some homemade fudge or candy bars, chocolate goodies may not be the best item to include in a care package.  Chocolate can melt, so if you pack too much in your care package, it may melt all over everything during a hot delivery drive.  The last thing you want is for your college student to open up the care package and find a big chocolaty mess. The truth is that you want to go with foods that are easy to send – foods that don’t melt, don’t stink, and don’t go bad. In the end, there are a lot of premade foods that will make the journey safe and sound.