The Car Pantry

There is something that would make my life easier at this point in time. It is a ‘car pantry.’ I am so tired of preparing snacks to take on outings I could lose it. I have tried, according to the best advice, to stop the snacking, to not allow food in the car, to only allow snacks at certain times during the day, but it just won’t stick. My kids are hungry at all times of the day and there is nothing I can do to change that.

Finn requires at least four snacks for a given two hour period. This means that running a few minutes late in the morning could have disastrous results for the tardiness section of Logan’s report card. He won’t eat all the snacks, he is just incredibly picky and if I don’t provide him with some choices, the errands that I run will be miserable (for me) to say the least. So I pack them; fruit chews, granola bars, cheezits and maybe raisins, only to most likely be caught with a child screaming in the aisles for yogurt.

And then there are my girls, who usually eat two bowls of cereal or servings of pancakes and fruit for breakfast, but thunder into my car after school begging for food. It’s as if they can’t survive for ten minutes, so now I am packing “pick up” snacks, just to get them home! Of course, their likes and dislikes change faster that I can keep up, so by the third attempt at a favorite snack, I get shot down and have to listen to complaints and groans of hunger all the way home. It’s amazing to me, all three of my kids can hold their bladders a hundred times longer than their daddy, but they can’t wait ten seconds to get home for a snack!

Don’t even get me started on my car!! It is such a mess I can’t even keep up. I try to enforce clean-up rules, but inevitably things get forgotten in the hustle and bustle of our days. The other day I could stand it no more; I pulled into a gas station to vacuum. It took me two stations to find one that had a vacuum, ten minutes to clean out the trash and another five to maneuver off and untangle the vacuum hose that the thoughtful chap before me left lying all over the ground. When I finally got in the right spot and was ready to go, Finn was screaming and there was a coin jammed in the quarter slot. UGH! Did I mention that it was 18º? It still needs to be vacuumed.

Well, I guess the car pantry wouldn’t make the mess any less present, but it would save me several minutes a day – even more if you think about not having to unload certain snack foods into the house after grocery shopping. It would be cool, maybe a little hatch door with all the favorite snacks in there; I’d be Johnny-on-the-spot with their choice du jour. But for now, I’ll keep packing them up – what choice do I have?

I just have one request. If you’re ever using a vacuum cleaner at a gas station, please wind up the hose and if the machine breaks, let the attendant know so that he can hang a sign. You’ll be saving a mom like me a whole lot of time and frustration when all she wants to do is clean up her ‘snack mess’.