Good lunch in a hurry: less waste doesn’t have to take more time

willo You might find this helpful Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Sticking with the theme from yesterday of how to pack a waste free lunch, today I’ll shift the discussion to getting a low waste lunch packed in a hurry.

Remember, the idea of a zero waste lunch is to avoid generating unnecessary garbage (usually packaging) to lighten our ecological impact.

Time is of the essence

No one seems to have enough time in her day anymore, and this is at least as true of moms as it is of the general population. Mom has the same 24 hours available to squeeze in caring for herself and her offspring.

Today started off with one of those mornings. It was predictable, and I often employ strategies to reduce morning stress, but sometimes I fail to achieve my idealized solutions.

  • I didn’t pack lunch the night before.
  • I needed to get laundry in the machine this morning so it would be dry by evening.
  • I didn’t prep the breakfast ingredients the night before.

Each of these tasks is quick—taking perhaps 5-10 minutes—but, when added together, there goes my precious early morning tea time. Not the end of the world, but it sets a very different tone to the day.

When I’m not prepared, it takes more work to have what the kids and I call a “good” morning. No yelling! No taking frustrations out on family members. No blaming someone else for the jobs we left undone and are scrambling to complete.

We did manage a good morning, in spite of my poor planning. One reason for that was having strategies in place for a speed-packed lunchbox. I even took a few extra seconds to snap some pictures. We arrived at school with three minutes to spare, though, if I’m honest, that’s only because traffic was mercifully light and I lucked out with every traffic signal on the way there.

Here’s how I packed a lunch so fast.

Main dish straight from a bulk package in the freezer

There were no leftovers ready to go, so DS2 got his favorite treat for a main dish: chicken nuggets. These are the gluten free version from Applegate Farms. He can use a microwave oven at school, so I packed them in a CorningWare 16 oz glass casserole dish. A paper towel and the heating instructions are folded into the dish with the food to make it easier for DS2 or a helpful teacher, to prepare his lunch.

The heating instructions call for the paper towel when re-heating nuggets in the microwave. At home, I would use the oven heating instructions and avoid the waste, but that isn’t an option for school.

When I’ve included glass dishes in a child’s lunchbox, I make a point of reminding him to be a little extra careful about how he handles it. I suspect that this advice is forgotten before he’s even through the door, but we have had very good results in spite of careless boys and breakable containers.

I’ve been happy with both CorningWare and Pyrex dishes. They are very sturdy. The insulation/padding of a modern, soft-sided lunchbox no doubt helps cushion the glass as well.

Side dishes zip from storage to containers

Here’s another case where I have to own up to my imperfections in the area of less wasteful grocery practices. One of the reasons I always keep “baby carrots” in our fridge is that they go straight from storage to the lunchbox or plate. The value of this ease can’t be overstated when it comes to getting fresh veggies into the lunchbox, and making vegetables a quick grab snack to which the boys may help themselves.

I also have regular carrots on hand that I buy from our local farmers. We use those when we are cooking and prepping lunches and snacks ahead of time in an ideal scenario. But baby carrots are the champions of less than ideal mornings at our house. Cherry tomatoes are really easy, too.

Another corner I cut on a day like today is patting dry the other produce before I pack it in the round stainless steel containers. The U Konserve/Kids Konserve rounds with silicone lids will hold whatever water remains while in transit, but I will probably get a moderately grubby lunchbox back at the end of the day due to dribbles, crumbs, and dirt.

Thank God it’s Friday! We only wash the lunchbox once a week, on the weekend, to maintain some semblance of good hygiene.

Potato chips are a rare lunchbox treat, but, like the chicken nuggets, both popular with the child and super quick to pack. Since he’s getting two servings of vegetables today—one for snack, and one for lunch—it’s a good day for this concession. I’ll avoid anything high in sodium for dinner tonight to make up for the little guy’s salty lunch.

Washing twice as many veggies took less time than choosing and getting out an alternate snack option, like nuts (kept in the freezer) or an egg (which I peel for him at home, thus costing more time.)

The apple wins the award for least packaging needed, but my son may well skip eating it. Sliced apples are much faster to eat, which is why I usually take the time to cut them up when I include them in his lunch. Reducing packaging isn’t necessarily an ecological improvement if it results in wasted food.

I mention this to, once again, underscore how personal all of these choices can be. What works for me may not be ideal for your situation, but I hope my tips generate ideas you can use.

Dessert and drinks are prepped ahead for the week

Both a treat and a beverage were already portioned and ready to pack. I almost always have these prepped for the week on Sunday night.

Sweets for school—except on a rare holiday—are home baked goodies with a healthier profile than packaged products. The blondie I packed today uses whole grain teff and millet flour and a healthy dose of almond butter for flavor and fat content. They taste great, and are helpful for tempting my little guy, who’d rather play than eat during his allotted break time.

My recipe is adapted from one I found here.

Lunch quick pack busy morning - 5

Today’s lunch pack required four U Konserve rounds (medium, 2 small, mini), a CorningWare 16 oz casserole, Nalgene 8 oz bottle, and a Bumkins small snack bag. The apple required no packaging.

My water bottle choice: Nalgene 8 oz rectangular

The water bottle issue is one I’ve grappled with for years. I’d prefer not to use plastic, but I have yet to find a glass bottle that is affordable enough, durable enough, and sized and shaped right for the way I want to pack a school lunch.

The Nalgene 8 oz wide mouth rectangular bottle is the best option I’ve come up with for daily school use. Here’s why:

This bottle fits inside the lunchbox. My younger son, in particular, will not remember a separate bottle. Either the lunch or the water bottle will be lost. I don’t like that option. He could carry a larger lunchbox, but then it wouldn’t fit inside his backpack; once again, he’d be responsible for managing two important items. It’s a recipe for more frequent replacement of expensive, necessary objects.

Also, rectangular dishes use the space in the lunchbox more efficiently than round ones. I tried packing our small Sigg bottles in the same spot, and the bag bulged alarmingly, if it would zip at all. The Nalgene rectangular bottle is the perfect shape.

I was really upset by how the Sigg company handled the issue of its use of BPA in the liners for its otherwise great aluminum bottles. We still use the ones we have, but I won’t be buying more.

I fill six Nalgene 8 oz bottles with about an inch of water on Sunday night. I freeze them all. Each morning, I top off one bottle’s chunk of ice with filtered water and pack it in the lunch. This helps keep the contents of the lunchbox cold, and it reduces the temperature of the water in contact with (HDPE) plastic.

These factors are important to me for food safety reasons and to reduce my child’s exposure to leached toxins, respectively.

When the weather heats up, or if I know the class is taking a nature study field trip, I’ll add a second frozen bottle to the lunchbox. This gives DS2 enough water to stay hydrated, and keeps the lunch chilled longer.

I have frozen ice packs in a variety of sizes which I also employ as needed, but frozen water bottles are sufficient during most of our school year in New England’s climate.

The whole lunch, packed; waste content: one paper towel.
Lunchbox, ready for school.
Pre-packaged snacks in pantry

Not all or nothing, just a best effort for today

It’s taken me far longer to describe packing this lunch than it did for me to complete the task. I’ve had years of practice, but it takes more desire to avoid waste than it does talent or skill. A few containers in convenient sizes also come in handy.

More than anything else, I hope that someone reading this who feels like waste free lunches are out of reach can see that this is a process. It isn’t all or nothing. Do what you can manage today, and aim to do a bit better tomorrow.

Here’s a secret: I keep a small shelf full of pre-packaged snacks at the top of my pantry. Why? Because, some mornings, tossing a ready made bag of pretzels into the lunchbox is the best I can do. It doesn’t matter why, and it doesn’t make me a bad person, or a failure as a mother.

Taking even small steps to reduce waste is a fine start. Just keep following those steps up with more. You’ll get to where you want to be.

What do you do on your busiest mornings to get the best lunch packed in the least time? Do you use more packaged goods, or have you got better solutions? Please share in the comments!

Peek inside my lunchbox: reusable solutions for a waste free lunch

willo Would this solve your problem? Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Say you want to join the waste free lunch revolution, but you don’t know where to start. Here’s some advice on where to begin if you’re looking to reduce disposable packaging in your packed lunches.

Lunch dishes zero waste Packed bag

Containers used include Medium U Konserve square (grey lid), 10 oz Thermos jar, U Konserve small round (brown lid), Nalgene 8 oz wide mouth bottle, and Bumkins snack bag (Batman)

What does a zero waste lunch look like, anyway?

There are a lot of nifty reusable lunch containers on the market today, and it could be easy to imagine you need to invest the kids’ college funds and buy a complete set of stainless steel Tupperware alternatives from an expensive, eco-friendly brand.

That’s great if you have the budget—and it isn’t wrong to say that a few perfectly sized and well designed pieces can streamline a lunch packing system and simplify busy mornings.

On the other hand, lunch—or, at least, the concept of eating food while away from home—is hardly a modern concept. You can pack a lunch with whatever you have on hand, and you can do it without waste.

Disposable products are almost entirely a modern concept. Lunchables and Ziploc bags are the newfangled oddities that should be regarded with suspicion.

You can reuse commercial packaging jars.

Reusing bottles and jars is one good option.

The great benefit of these is that they appear in your home as a side benefit of some consumable you’ve purchased anyway. Jelly jars as drinking glasses? That’s reuse at work. You can certainly bring soup to school in a mayonnaise jar.

The down side is having the right tool for the given job. Does anyone have a kid who eats that much soup? Unless we were buying what I think of as “singles” sizes (as opposed to our large, “family size” jars) of mayo, peanut butter, etc., these jars are too big for any meal I can imagine for my kids.

If you’ve got the jars on hand, however, use them!

My mother-in-law has told me many times about how, living in communist Russia, they would save every jar they got. They were considered generous gifts to offer when someone invited you to visit their home. Every one was reused, and very much appreciated as the useful tool it was.

Her stories really help me appreciate the bounty I enjoy every day in my life, and we’ve gotten plenty of family sized helpings of her homemade chicken soup in repurposed jars.

Dry foods will survive just fine wrapped in fabric

Sandwiches on the dry side and similarly non-oily cakes can be wrapped in plain cloth napkins. If I have something just a bit too squishy for cotton, I might cheat and use a layer of waxed paper or parchment beneath the cloth. Okay, then I’m no longer packing a waste free lunch, but the paper does at least stand a chance of biodegrading, unlike a plastic option.

I grew up using cloth napkins, and that’s all we’ve ever used in our shared home. That means they are always on hand in the kitchen, and that I’ve also got a subset of napkins with stains. That mayo from the sandwich could make a grease spot? Oh well.

Just take care not to use your heirloom linens for this task, and it’ll be fine.

Damp foods can travel in dishes with fabric lids

Moving up the squishiness scale, damp or moderately malleable foods can go with you in any bowl you own. Just cover with a cloth and use a rubber band to hold the cover in place. This option is perfectly fine for adults who will carry a lunchbox in a reasonably upright orientation.

Remember Little House on the Prairie? Well, those kids carried their lunch to school in a tin pail with a cloth over the top, and we know Ma didn’t pack it full of Tupperware. The kids probably swung the pail as they walked several miles to school, too. Not a single anecdote from those novels tells the tale of a ruined lunch and how the world, as a result, ended.

Err on the side of caution and use an oversized dish. The food is less likely to slop over if you swing your pail tip your lunchbox in transit.

Soup is tricky: buy a Thermos

If I were starting to pack waste free lunches today with no existing dishes, and I was ready to invest in some basic equipment, my first purchase would be:

All of these are made primarily of stainless steel. They hold up well, are non toxic, and they won’t break under normal use, even by kids or clumsy adults. All of them have withstood regular washing by machine, even the Thermos which doesn’t recommend dishwasher use.

Lunch dishes zero waste Squares nested Rounds

U Konserve sells the To Go square boxes as a “Nesting Trio” (compare to individual piece prices on Amazon for the best value); below are U Konserve small round, mini round, & a generic red silicone baking cup

I’m assuming anyone reading this article already owns at least one reusable water bottle or beverage cup. I see making that switch as even more fundamental than packing a waste free lunch. Exploring the best water bottles would require a whole separate post!

Why these?

The Thermos is vital for me, because I like to pack hot leftovers and soups. Even when I had access to a microwave at work, I found it easier to do all my food prep at home in the morning. Ditto for my kids. I can barely get my little guy to eat the food I send for him; he’d rather skip lunch and head straight outside for free time. Only an insulated container gives you warm food immediately when you’re ready to eat.

A big eater could readily swap the 10 oz Thermos jar for the larger 16 oz size. The lids interchange between the two sizes, and I own both. I tend to pack smaller servings of more types of food for the larger appetites in our family, but the 16 oz size isn’t unreasonably large for a one dish meal such as casserole.

But, many times, I want to send drier foods that are fine at room temperature, or perhaps a sandwich to accompany that soup. I’ve found the medium square To Go box by U Konserve to be an ideal size. It will hold a fairly large sandwich (e.g., on artisan bread), but it can also handle a child’s mini sandwich with an assortment of small side dishes.

Large (top), Medium, Small
Side view shows depth difference
Food in a Medium

A really big eater might be inclined to start with a large square To Go box, but I’d still recommend the medium as an initial purchase. Your food will travel better in a box that’s packed full; empty space leads to shifting and deconstructed sandwiches. Buy two mediums (or maybe a medium and a small square) instead of one large and you’ve got more flexibility.

The U Konserve small round containers come in a set of two, which is a good start, because I pack between one and three of these in my son’s lunchbox almost every day. This is the size for a serving of carrot sticks. The silicone lid fits snugly enough to allow for sloppy foods such as yogurt, and its 5 ounce capacity is within the range of usual serving sizes for it.

One standard sized cookie fits neatly inside a small round by diameter, though I’ve been told that I should “fill” the container by including two or more cookies for the necessary depth…

These small rounds are approximately the size of a tuna fish can.

Having set that bare minimum as a baseline, I struggled to write the last section without mentioning what I’ll add here as Phase Two of the Zero Waste Lunchbox Shop-a-thon.

Extras make fitting odd items easier

Moving on from “bare necessities” to “really nice to have,” I’d add:

A set of silicone “baking cups” works wonders to subdivide your larger lunch box containers. These flexible molds come in standard circles, like a reusable version of the paper liners you’ve seen on cupcakes, but they are also available in squares, rectangles, and other shapes and sizes.

Food in a Medium

I use the square and rectangular cups the most often. They let me snuggle a pickle or other wet food in the same dish with a sandwich when I have an empty corner to fill, and they keep the wrong flavors from mingling. Before I had the silicone inserts, I used a lot more waxed paper or parchment to keep disparate foods from touching each other.

Since they come in a rainbow of colors, baking cups also make the lunchbox look happy inside, for an added ray of sunshine.

The next addition to the shopping list, not quite as basic as the small rounds by U Konserve, but, again, appearing super frequently in our family lunch boxes, are by the same brand: the Mini Food Containers (set of 3.)

Lunch dishes zero waste mini round

U Konserve mini food containers are ideal for boiled eggs or cucumbers

About half of Amazon shoppers are offended by how small these are, but that’s why I think they’re so perfect. Many kids don’t like commingled foodstuffs. Separation can be a beautiful thing. Also, many foods aren’t good for us in large quantities. These make a proper one ounce serving of nuts look bountiful instead of pitiful. They perfectly hold one peeled hard boiled egg.  A single macaroon fits neatly inside.

They won’t keep in liquids, so they aren’t quite as versatile as the rounds with the silicone lids, but I love this size.  It’s great for my light eater to have a high protein snack, stored distinctly from his lunch selections.

My final almost must haves are also some of my newest acquisitions: Bumkins snack bags.

Bumkins snack bag (large size) with Ziploc sandwich bag (holding orange round & spork)
Bumkins large (Batman), Bumkins small (whales), U Konserve Medium To Go

These are like Ziploc bags, but made of washable fabric. The Bumkins brand also makes cloth diapers and other baby items. I preferred their bibs for my boys when they were babies. This is the same durable material: water resistant, wipeable, smooth, and washable.

They can go in the dishwasher (top rack) just like the rest of the lunch stuff, or you can launder them by machine. They dry overnight. I hang mine over the handles of my knives in the knife rack.

Now that I have them, I wonder why I waited so long, but I can tell you the answer. I doubted they would work. I thought they would be hard to clean or less convenient, like some other (hand wash only) reusable zipper bags I tried years ago. When I realized last fall that the only time I was still reaching for a disposable bag was when I had a tiny corner to fill in a full lunchbox, I finally bought these, and I’ve been very happy with both the large (sandwich bag) and small (snack) sizes.

I’ll admit it: I don’t fill the Bumkins bags with super juicy stuff. I have jars with threaded lids for that, and would sooner use the silicone lidded stainless than the bags if I didn’t. Neither the kids nor I have had any juice leak through from fruits, veggies, or pickles with them, though. I polled the house today to make sure.

I’ve packed a lot of lunches using many products

I was inspired to describe our lunch kit today by the comment stream after a post on A  Ferdydurking Blog about reducing waste. I’ve tried quite a few products to refine a system that works well for us, and probably wasted a bit of money in the process because I love to compare every possible thing.

One great bit of news is that almost every eco friendly lunchbox brand I’ve tried has been of good quality and sincerely useful. I can’t say enough good things about LunchBots, U Konserve (formerly Kids Konserve), and even the plastic (but high quality) Laptop Lunch brand.

It’s a far cry from the loads of cheap plastic ware that abound in mass market stores and often have poor fitting lids or corners that crack within a few uses. But not every piece will be ideal for every lunchbox. It depends upon what you like to pack for lunch.

I’ve offered up my best suggestions for where to start if you want to begin packing a lunch that’s a bit lighter on the planet. Please feel free to ask if I’ve prompted any questions. I’ve packed an awful lot of lunches in these dishes!

Ticks suck. Literally! Take action to prevent tick-borne diseases like Lyme.

willo Would this solve your problem? Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Taking precautions to prevent tick bites is a daily necessity in many places today. I’ve opted to include insect repellent clothing (treated with permethrin) and judicious application of insect repellent in our family arsenal against these tiny pests, combined with physical measures such as covering the skin as much as possible.

Repel insect repellent spray

Spring to fall, insect repellent stays in the car

Statistics tell us that tick-borne illnesses—including Lyme Disease in my region—are now endemic in vast swathes of the country. This became clear to me on a personal level when I totaled up the number of kids in my child’s first grade class that I knew anecdotally to have a Lyme diagnosis: six out of 21 kids!

29% of my son’s first grade class had Lyme Disease

We chose schools based at least in part on practices including time outdoors and nature study every day, but one result was increasing the kids’ exposure to a still-expanding risk of infection via insect bites.

In addition to Lyme, other tick-borne diseases include babesiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and tularemia. There are more, and specific symptoms and prognoses differ, but the most important thing to know as an nature lover or outdoors enthusiast is that tens of thousands of Americans are infected by tick-borne illnesses every year. Some continue to suffer ill effects for years.

Infected ticks are a risk to human health in every state in the USA except Hawaii.

Prevention is better than treating a disease

Where simple steps can prevent pain and suffering, I choose to take defensive action. There’s controversy about how Lyme should be diagnosed and treated, for example. I’d rather not have to become a part of that debate.

Here’s how I protect my family:

1) Know the risks & be vigilant

Ticks are found in many regions, but they tend to lurk where leaves accumulate and trees or brush meet open areas. Here in New England, all those charming stone walls are great spots to stop and rest on a hike, but also popular hangouts for ticks.

Ticks have evolved to wait alongside paths for their prey.

Learn where ticks are likely in your area. Try to avoid brushing up against foliage if possible.

Ticks can be active any time the weather warms above freezing. They don’t die off seasonally like mosquitoes do. They are most active from roughly April to September, and their feeding habits vary according to their life cycle stages, but I’ve taught my kids to take precautions against ticks any time the temperature is above 40ºF.

Check yourself and your children after time spent outdoors. Teach your kids to check themselves, too.

Bathing upon returning home is best, though washing isn’t guaranteed to remove ticks from your skin. Close inspection is necessary. Some ticks are as tiny as the head of pin.

Change clothes when you come inside after spending time in tick-likely areas.

If you want to wear lightly worn clothing again without washing, put clothes in a hot dryer for just ten minutes. The heat is what kills the little beasts.

2) Take all feasible physical measures to keep ticks off your skin

This is so simple, and probably more effective than anything else: wear long pants and tuck them into your socks when you’re in tick-infested areas. Yes, you will look like a dork, but you won’t come home to find a tick attached in one your crevices.

Ticks don’t fly or jump. They linger at the tips of plants, waiting for a likely host.

Once they’re on your body, they climb. The tick finds an attractive feeding spot, buries its head in your flesh, and feeds on your blood. It might inject a glue to hold tighter into your body, or anesthetic saliva to prevent your feeling its presence.

A tick might remain on your body feeding for several days. Longer exposure to an infected tick increases the odds that the infection will transfer to you.

Cover your skin, and ticks will have a harder time feeding off of your blood or transmitting disease.

3) Use chemical repellents in a targeted way

It’s downright ironic that I prioritize buying organic food, but I’ve invested in a set of insecticide treated clothing for every member of my family. I’m concerned enough about the threat of tick-borne infection to take this step. We wear treated clothes when we’re spending significant time out of doors.

Treated clothing comes from many brands, and is often labeled using the Insect Shield® license, but I’ve seen variations on the market like Buzz Off, NosiLife®, BugsAway, or No Fly Zone®. I look for bargains on Amazon or in the Sierra Trading Post catalog since I care far more about function than style for this category of clothing.

You can also apply a permethrin treatment to your own clothing at home, but then you have toxic liquids to apply correctly and store or dispose of properly. Home treatments also wash out faster than commercial ones. The solution is very dangerous to pet cats. I choose not to apply permethrin treatments at home for these reasons.

For daily wear at school and during outdoor play, I made ankle wraps from commercially available, permethrin treated bandanas. This was far more cost-effective than buying many pairs of treated pants, and the bandanas are easier to find than treated socks in children’s sizes. It also removes the insecticide to one layer further from my child’s skin.

Snaps
Velcro
Wrap on child’s ankle

At full retail, one bandana costs $18, and can wrap two pairs of ankles; treated pants retail around $60 per pair and are quickly outgrown by kids. Outdoors, my kids have been instructed to tuck their pants into their socks, and wear the bandana wraps on top of the socks.

One more very affordable option is to buy Insect Shield® socks in a men’s size, then cut them into ≅2 inch tubes (slices of sock.) You can get about eight pairs from one pair of large socks.

Wear these slices as sweatbands around wrists and ankles like a fashionable athlete circa 1980. Dorky again (well, perhaps that’s in the eye of the beholder), but quick to don, relatively cheap, and great for putting a physical barrier right where you need it. These will also hold long pants or sleeves snug against the bare skin to stop crawling ticks.\

I keep insect repellent spray in my car and I encourage my child to keep a bottle in his school cubby for application before recess, if it’s allowed. We use bug spray just on our feet and ankles before we go outside to walk or play.

Kids are usually in a hurry to get outside, so I combine as many of these measures as possible each day. If they miss one step, they still usually have some protection against ticks.

Prioritize whichever measures you and your family are most likely to remember to use every time you spend time outdoors. One of my sons was good about remembering to pull on the “sweatband” style bands; one of them just tucks his pants into his socks before school and is happy to stay like that all day.

Do what works.

4) Immediately report tick bites to your doctor

When I found a tick on myself one morning, attached/embedded and engorged, and obviously acquired at least 24 hours before, I opted to take a prophylactic dose of antibiotics. Our home attempt at removal squished the tick and therefore increased my risk of acquiring any disease it could be carrying.

This was the only time I’ve found a tick on a member of my family in this condition. We’ve found them crawling on our skin but not attached in other cases.

I also sent the dead tick into a lab at a state university for identification and testing. It cost me $50 out of pocket, but, when the results showed that my tiny attacker was positive for tick-borne disease, I was relieved to have taken the antibiotic.

I might not have become infected without these measures, but they helped greatly with my peace of mind. Keep in mind that I usually take a wait and see attitude before giving any member of my family antibiotics. I avoid medication when possible and try to resolve health issues with rest, diet, etc. I was unwilling to gamble when Lyme Disease was in the equation.

Definitely discuss these measure with your own doctor, but be aware that a single dose prophylactic antibiotic is an option in some circumstances, and ask for treatment if your situation warrants.

I’m also grateful that I took the prophylactic treatment as I’ve since been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that includes joint pain. I would have wondered more about the potential for chronic Lyme disease otherwise, though my symptoms aren’t a great match for those widely reported.

Even if you don’t take preventative antibiotics, but you later become symptomatic, notes in your medical record about a tick bite could provide a useful clue to your health care provider.

♦

Wooden jigsaw puzzles: what was old is new again

willo You might find this helpful Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned this before: I love assembling jigsaw puzzles.

Some of my enjoyment of puzzles relates to fond memories of doing them with my mother when I was growing up.

Another element is the sense of well-being I get from assembling all kinds of things. I also like putting together furniture from IKEA, and building Lego sets.

There’s a reason I worked in software quality assurance (QA) for a number of years. I get satisfaction from methodically completing a series of steps, confirming every expectation has been met. I’m weird like that.

So one of my favorite pastimes is completing a jigsaw puzzle.

After almost forty years of doing puzzles, I was amazed to discover a new frontier in this relatively straightforward hobby.

The wooden jigsaw puzzle difference

wooden jigsaw puzzlesI started collecting wooden jigsaw puzzles. Continue reading →

Summer vacation isn’t the enemy of modern parents, but it reveals social boundaries

willo Here's how I see it Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Last week, I saw an ad predicated upon the idea that summer vacation is a nightmare for parents. It wasn’t even Memorial Day yet, and, already, they’d infected the airwaves.

Do parents really bemoan summer break?

I despise commercials that attempt to advertise products based upon the perverse notion that I loathe spending time with my children.

The Back to School ads are even worse than the End of the School Year set. Parents dance in the streets because they are unable to contain their joy at giving up the burden of spending entire days in the company of their own kids.

Are these the same kids Americans were so desperate to have that more than 10% of US women of childbearing age have used infertility services? Bah, humbug!

My kids are cool, and I enjoy their company. Summer means no alarm clocks and more opportunities to say yes to their (admittedly, sometimes goofy) requests. Summertime equates to free time.

Or are parents with limited resources desperate for better solutions?

I’m crying foul. I think this is primarily a lame advertising trope.

But, of course, there is added stress for families where all available caregivers work outside the home. Finding appropriate summer camps or childcare is a pain. That’s true 365 days a year in America for kids too young for public school.

This isn’t a summer problem, or a parenting problem. It’s a political problem, and an economic one. This is not proof that parents want their kids to stay locked up indoors year ’round.

Instead, we see a sign of a childcare problem in a society expecting high rates of worker participation from able bodied adults. (Those would be the same adults who most frequently produce offspring!)

Really, how many of us resent watching the kids pour out of the schools and into the home, onto the beaches, and into the parks?

Most parents work their butts off attempting to earn the best for their kids, and that includes fresh air, exercise, and time and space to dream the biggest dreams. That’s where summer vacation can really shine, but only for those with the time and resources to let it happen.

My family’s summers include travel, museums, hours poring over books of our own choosing, and lots of time with extended family. I don’t even have to question whether or not this is a good use of my kids’ time. Of course it is!

I can barely express how grateful I am for this privilege.

We supplement our lazy summer days with hours of Khan Academy and specialty family camps, not because we feel compelled to keep up, but because learning new things is awesome and we want to share the joy with our kids.

I don’t believe for one minute that there are legions of caring parents in America who want more testing, more trivial comparisons, and more common core for their beloved children.

Parents want their kids to have access to opportunities. Parents want their kids to learn useful stuff. Parents want their kids to grow up well and be successful and happy.

I can’t even say how much I wish summer vacation was an equal opportunity benefit for all children.

Who really hates summer break?

Parents today—like most people today—struggle under a burden of technology and schedules seemingly designed to detract from a fulfilling life.

Theoretically, we live in an era of reduced physical effort and greater access to information, leading inexorably to an easier life. In practice, maybe not so much.

These commercials are lazy work on the part of advertisers, but they do reveal a modern day American tragedy.

Some of us have to get a little desperate when school lets out for summer.

Some of us get to enjoy our kids’ company in the same situation.