Hello and welcome back!  Before I blog-on today, I must add a quick note about the Bathroom Cabinet blog.  I mentioned that when you are sorting out your makeup, to remove the brushes.  Did anyone wonder why?  It was to shine them as well…  It only takes a few minutes to give them a wash and you will find that they work much better – especially those little eye-shadow foam ended applicators.  I use a mild soap – the Neutrogena hypoallergenic is great and rinses out very easily – and just wash and rinse in warm water until they are clean.  Then lay them out on a handtowel in the sun to dry.

Okay – lunches.  Firstly the rationale…  What could you do for yourself if you had an extra 20 minutes plus each morning?  Well, that is what I am told that most of us spend making lunches for the family every morning.  One of the great outcomes of applying Lean theories is that you achieve capacity release.  Releasing additional capacity in a workplace means that people spend less time doing routine things and more time doing things that add value for the customer.  Well, guess what?  YOU are my customers.

There are a couple of ways that you can remove the need to make lunches every morning while still saving the big bucks on bought lunches:

• Get the lunch eaters to make it themselves or
• Spend 30 – 40 minutes once a week to remove the need to do it daily

Option 1 is a good one if everyone is old enough to do it (and responsible enough to finish the job by cleaning up after themselves).  This gives older children a great opportunity to learn self reliance and also reduces the likelihood of items coming home uneaten since they have chosen them themselves.  If they DO come home uneaten, you can certainly point out that they chose them for themselves!  Of course, you have to ensure that there are sufficient resources (read – food) for your family members to do this and it helps if they have input into that process (read – contribute to the shopping list and putting the items away so that they know where they are).

Option 2 is great if the children are smaller and there are a range of nutritious things that can be prepared in bulk and in advance.  Personally, I used to make all the sandwiches each Sunday afternoon, wrap them individually and tag them according to the contents.  Lots of sandwich fillings freeze and thaw well – ham and cheese, peanut paste, Nutella, lemon spread, cream cheese and sultanas, silverside and chutney.  You get the idea.  And here is another situation where the cheap, coloured plastic baskets from the dollar store work well because sandwiches stack nicely into the appropriately sized baskets and you can label the basket rather than each of the sandwiches.  And, if you live in a warm climate like I do, it is rather nice to think that the sandwiches go off to school frozen - keeping the rest of the lunch cold - and are thawed ready for lunch time.  Of course there are things other than sandwiches that can be picked and packed by your family:

• Soups are a good choice – either made by you and frozen into appropriately sized containers or bought in microwave containers.  Best if there is a facility to microwave at the school/workplace.  I love to nuke a shop-bought soup at work for lunch in winter and enjoy with a slice of toast at my desk.  And even the premium soups in the microwaveable containers only cost around $2.50 each from the supermarket – way less than the $7 - $8 you pay for a half decent sandwich
• Pasta with sauce is another and my kids prefer it cold, as they do with many of the other left-over type meals.  It takes very little time to make up a batch of their favourite butter chicken (with some finely chopped vegetables) and rice and store/freeze in some lunch-box size containers

And, of course, you can’t just send them off with a sandwich or other ‘main’.  Our rule is one of the above, a snack for little lunch, at least one piece of fruit and a water bottle.  The fruit is easy – make sure that there is always a full fruit bowl within easy reach for them to pick and pack.  The snacks are pretty easy too.  I tend to haunt the supermarkets in the evenings (because that’s when I have time) and grab multiple packages from the bakery.  Things like scones, fruit buns and rock cakes are often marked down the evenings that they are baked.  It is then a simple thing to do to take these home, wrap them individually in cling wrap and pop them into another basket in the freezer.  Popping a bit of butter or other spread on them if they prefer it that way takes very little time.  Of course, you could save even more money by baking them in bulk yourself!  Sadly, I am not a baker, so I take the supermarket option.

You will find that it takes very little time to train the kids to pick-n-pack their own pre-prepared lunches or less than two minutes for you to do it yourself in the evening before or that morning.  Get a chant going – “a main, a snack, at least one piece of fruit and water”.  Do the occasional QA check on what is coming home and you will be able to refine your preparation to what they like and actually consume.  And that’s when you get to enjoy the extra 20+ minutes of extra time that you can spend on YOU in the mornings.

Cheers,

Alex the Organizer

http://room-to-organize.com

Tags: declutter, Kids, Kitchen, lunch, organize, room, room to organize, sort, sorting