|
Nine More Months of Lunch
Packing
|
||
|
Home Page | Recipes | Diet Recipes | Dinner Party Menus | Food History | Culinary Dictionary | Diet, Health & Beauty |
||
|
Lea Schneider is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists. Lee provides hands-on organizing and organizational consulting through her company, Organize Right Now, at www.organizerightnow.com, and her favorite project is the kitchen.
Contact
Information:
|
Nine More Months of Lunch
Packing One child is yelling about missing PE clothes and another shouting that their life is over because their hair is standing up. In between those issues, breakfast and the normal chaos, dealing with packing lunches can be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Getting organized to deal with the next nine months worth of lunches is certainly worth the small amount of time involved. Our kitchens, when set up to function properly, have a certain layout and rhythm. Most likely, I’d find the coffee and coffee filters near the coffee pot at your house. The things for baking are all together. Your cookware, pots and pans, are surely near the stove. Yet, when it comes to lunch making, I bet you have to go to one drawer for plastic bags, another for a paper bag and then another drawer for a plastic fork or spoon. You grab a napkin from the napkin holder, peanut butter one cabinet and a small bag of chips from another. Multiply that times several children! To be honest, you are lucky if there is a bag of chips or container of pudding. Somehow, when you were not looking, someone snacked on all the individually packaged lunch food you purchased. Most likely, family members stay confused about what is okay for snacking and what is off limits. Now you are grumpy and in a rush to try to find something else to put in the lunch. This type of lunch packing ends up with lots of hustling about and wasted time. Not only that, it makes it harder for your child to successfully participate in this routine. No wonder if you ask them to help, they forget something. Think how many steps are involved. Here’s how to set up a great system for lunches.
Not too long ago, I was enjoying coffee with a table of professional organizers who all happen to be mothers. We drifted away from the talk of organizing and into the talk of parenting. Pretty soon we began to compare notes and discovered every one of us had something in common. We all had taught our children to be self-sufficient from packing their own lunch to doing their own laundry. Part of disorganization comes from trying to do everything for everybody. As much as our heart desires us to be that mom who does it all, it simply is not possible or practical. Taking the time to teach your child to be organized is the greatest gift you can give them for they will carry it through their whole life. This includes packing their book bag and laying out their clothing the night before and packing their own lunch! All you have to do is organize and keep that lunch cabinet stocked. That is enough of a job!
|
|