It is chaos in our house some days, and others seem to run as if the planning had been in the works for months. The days when chaos reigns over us all is usually a day when I have forgotten to organise something.
My helper today!
Notes and permission slips that haven’t been signed, a forgotten swimming bag or hat, a parent teacher appointment that had slipped my mind (I have way to many of these), a shared plate of food for a special event. It is always something that I should have organised earlier that catches me of guard.
I have always been pretty organised, or at least pretty good at solving any issues that come up at the last minute. Unfortunately with all the extra things we have going on a the moment I am finding myself making mistakes more and more and running late, which is never good with my boys, If we are late to anything Master 10 just won’t go, school a movie anything, he has to be on time.
So I have made it a family goal to be more organised this term. Starting with myself. My first mission is to organise the lunch box packing a bit better. I have four in school now and next year will be five so I really have to figure out how to get their lunches done a whole lot quicker. It is usually where things start to go wrong of a morning.
At least once a week I find myself searching for extra things to go into their lunches as they have eaten what I had already planned on using. I understand how it happens, they get home from school and head straight for the pantry.
So in order to make this plan work I have decided on two courses of action. One, I’m going to make afternoon tea a set menu, this means that they will have to have what is on offer and nothing else. I also plan on making a selection of muffins and slices and having them prepared and ready to go when they get home so no one is tempted to hit the pantry.
Action two is to prepackaged everything I need for their lunches on the weekend and label them. For all five days of school and each child’s name on each portion as well. So I will end up with 20 packages of crackers ( different crackers for each child as none of them like the same thing) 20 packages of either mini muffins or slices (again depending on each child’s food issues).
20 tubs of yogurt in the fridge on a shelf I am going to label “lunch boxes only), 20 portions of cheese and fruit with I will have to make on Monday and Wednesday night as I don’t think it will be to tasty after sitting in the fridge cut up for four days.
Ofcourse after starting this master plan today I discovered I was out of yogurt!
I’m hoping that with all those measures the only thing I will have to prepare in the mornings is their sandwiches or wraps. As I didn’t get a chance to do this I Sunday I have decided to start today. I’ve made weetbix slice and packed all the snacks for the rest of the week into their individual bags. I even had enough slice left over for todays afternoon tea! So that was a bonus.
I also made muffins for next week which I’m going to freeze and just grab four out the night before school each day. As a side tip, if you ever have to cling wrap small food items, place them onto the cling film first then cut around them, it stops the film from rolling into a ball of useless plastic the needs to be thrown in the bin.
Apart from the above ideas, I’m not sure how I can make lunch preparations go any smoother. If you have any ideas or tips please share in the comments, anything that saves time and fuss is a winner.
Thanks for reading.
