Making Bringing Your Lunch To Work Easier

I bring my lunch to work most days and have been pretty good about bringing my lunch to work for years. Not everyone does this or is good at it. What do I mean by being good at it? It means making sure your lunch makes it to work with you without exploding all over your carry bag or getting squished in your briefcase.

To make bringing your lunch a more pleasant experience I recommend the following ideas:

1) Get yourself a lunch bag. Some of you might be too young to remember metal lunch boxes, but I carried one as a kid for a really long time,-until junior high when it was "uncool" to have a lunch box. I never had a sqashed sandwich with my Spiderman lunch box and I also had a really cool Spidey thermos as well. Take yourself to the CVS, Walgreens, Target, Wally Mart, K-Mart, or where ever and hop over to the cooler isle. For around $6 (if not less) you can probably find a nice insulated lunch bag. I recommend one with some structure-like a plastic bottom or sides. Many of the lunch bags also come with a little blue gel cooler pack, you can probably pick up one for $1 or less. My current lunch box is square, insulated and has a plastic bottom. This will also help to keep your lunch from spoiling until you get to work and pop it in the fridge or until lunchtime at your desk.

2) Get your self some decent containers for your leftovers that become lunchovers: Best purchase I made in December was to get a new set of Rubbermaid containers in three sizes, they are great for storing leftovers, are microwave safe and most importantly, they don't leak! Which is great if you are bringing soup to work and accidentally tip over your bag. I also have a square container that is the perfect size for a salad. I like salads with things in them and this container holds the perfect amount for a filling lunch. The containers also fit nicely into my lunch sack, which was one reason I bought the set. I think I paid $18 for a set of 18 containers and a storage stand. The old take out food plastic containers just did not stand up to the repetitive use (tops split, containers split, not all were microwave safe!). Also make sure you have things like foil, plastic wrap, wax paper, etc to wrap sandwiches in.

3) If you have a place at your office, pick up some salad dressings or fun condiments to enhance your leftovers: I'm lucky, I have an office kitchen where I can keep a couple bottles of salad dressing, hot sauce, a pepper grinder and other things that can spice up my leftovers. Cost to me was minimal (I spend about $5 a month on croutons, salad dressing, etc) and it makes a world of difference to spice up the food.

4) Remember to bring home your lunch sack so you can clean it and restock it!. Sounds easy cheesy, but I sometimes stick my lunch bag under my desk and forget to bring it home. It can get sort of gross if you forget this on a Friday and don't bring it home until Monday.

There is nothing worse than making a yummy sandwich only to get to work and find your juice bottle or apple flattened it out or the egg salad went "off" after sitting in your bag since 7:30 AM. Hopefully the above helpful Betty Crocker reminders will make it easier to bring your lunch to work!