Packing Lunches

Sometimes I go crazy.

Like when Danny says "Forget the laundry, let's go play."

My insides start to run around inside of me like my own personal tornado and usually that makes me start to cry and kick things. "I want to play outside with you, but having no clean clothes to wear on Monday also makes me want put my fist through the door."

I am a working wife, and I just can't do it all.

There, I said it. I feel very proud of myself for being able to admit to ya'll that I don't have it all together. Sometimes keeping up with a job and a home is enough to make me go to bed at 8 pm, but I can't go to bed because there's just too much to do!

Making lunches every night before we went to bed started having a terrible affect on me, and therefore it started having an affect on our marriage. A tornadic affect in your marriage is never a good thing. It gets the sheets all twisted up.

Every night we would debate whether we would do the responsible, adult thing and make lunches or whether we would spend some quality time taking a walk or eating ice cream. Sometimes all that got accomplished was a good cry on my end because I just couldn't get it all done and a good hug on Danny's end because he has great shoulders for that sort of thing.

Finally, Danny decided that when we stub our toe on something, then we need to move that something so we don't keep hurting ourselves. It's stupid to keep stubbing your toe on the same thing over and over and over again. And somehow we kept stubbing our toe every night when we'd try to pack the lunches.

So the Sunday afternoon lunch-fest was born. It's the greatest idea that involves sliced bread.

I make enough sandwiches (both turkey & cheese or peanut butter & jelly) for both of us for the week (Monday through Friday):

I pack those up and freeze each of the sandwiches in ziploc bags.

Here's the trick: Don't put any mayo/mustard on the turkey & cheese sandwiches and they won't get soggy when thawing. Put peanut butter on both pieces of bread so the jelly can't soak into the bread and they won't get soggy when thawing.

Next, I bring out all the things we like to eat with lunch and for snacks.

I put enough single servings of fruit, crackers, carrots, cookies, etc. into ziploc bags for each of us to have several a day. I pre-wash and cut everything that won't spoil/turn brown - carrots are peeled and cut into sticks, grapes are washed, celery is cut into sticks and packed with a little container of peanut butter, etc. Apples, pears, mangos, etc. are left whole.

I then bust out 10 paper bags and label them for me and Danny for every day of the week (these have been re-used for multiple weeks).

All the snack items go into these bags and then all the bags go onto a shelf in the fridge.

When we wake up in the morning we just grab a brown bag from the refrigerator and a sandwich out of the freezer. It's fast, easy and efficient.

No more internal tornadoes each night; no more debates on whether to hang out or make lunches - we can always hang out. It's a beautiful when you have food to eat AND you get to relax with your husband.