school lunch

I really don’t know what I was thinking.

This is just a short note about home life. Let me start by explaining that I am the maker of school lunches in this family. I have been making school lunches for the gang at least 15 years. My job allows me to work at home, so it’s easier for me than for Tori to take that on while she’s getting ready for school. There was a time when I was making six lunches every school morning. Now I’m down to two – Tori and Max. Friday is the last lunch day of the school year. I’ve made it through another year. I have two lunches each morning next year, and then Max goes away to college and I’m down to making lunch each morning for Tori. Which I’m happy – even honored – to do.

And the other thing you need to know – well, no, you don’t need to know it, but the story won’t make much sense if you don’t – I much prefer the fold-lock-top bags to the zip-lock type. They work just as well and are way less expensive. I can pay half as much for a box of my preferred style as I can for the zipper bags, and get more than twice as many.

But they’re getting harder and harder to find. Seriously, most of the markets around here have stopped carrying them all together, or have only one, cheap “off-brand” of the fold-lock top bags and shelf after shelf of the more expensive zips. Of course. They make more money selling smaller boxes of bags for more money. So it can get frustrating.

And then it occurred to me to look online. And son of a gun, Amazon had them. And the cost per bag was not only lower than the zips, it was also lower than the off-brand bags I could find in the one local store. (Tori will tell you, “cost per unit” is a big thing to me. I spend a lot of time in the store calculating which is really the best buy based on cost per unit.) Even with shipping figured in, this was a good deal.

So I figured I’d buy a box. Maybe two, because if you’re paying shipping, you want to spread it over a larger number of products, get as much bang for your buck as possible. And then I saw that they also carried a bulk package – six boxes at a cost-per-unit so low I couldn’t help myself. I bought them.

And then the postal carrier delivered them and I realized I should have done a little more math. Because each box contains 180 bags. And there are six boxes. Which means I now have 1,080 sandwich bags!

That’s a lot of bags. That’s a lot of sandwiches! I honestly don’t think I’ll ever need to buy sandwich bags again.