WFMW: car edition
Fast food trash can really add up when you have 10 people eat an entire meal on the road.
This is not an established technique, but our daughter had a great idea the last time we ate on the run:
Courses were doled out one at a time, and each child’s ticket to her next course was the wrapper from her previous course. Get it? No fries til I get a straw wrapper from you. No burger til you hand me your empty fry box.
The only exception was the cup - they share cups of water when we eat in the van, and I didn’t expect them to drink it all before they ate.
I also didn’t want them to finish their drinks before they ate. We would have been starting the potty stops before they ever touched their fries.
So when the meal was done, for the first time ever, we had a bag of trash already gathered in the front of the van and not a single piece of trash on the floor. Unless you count cups. They were all over the floor, but we don’t call them cups or trash when they’re empty: those are Carsick Containers.
Yeah, those work for us too. A lot.
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Filed under: WFMW: works for me, food
I will definitely be using this idea next time we eat in the car!!
Great idea!
We have found with snacks instead of passing boxes and bags around, 1 person puts some of each in baggies.
Each person gets a baggie, if you want more on the trip do not loose your baggie!
No seconds until the person dishing up finishes theirs!
Nanci
((lol)) the muffled laughing is about the next post
That is a great idea!
But it reminds me of the first time I ever rode with my little sister after she got her driver’s license. We were going to church, just the two of us, but she hadn’t picked up her “Carsick Container” from the night before. As we rounded the corner (yes, the one two doors from our house), the “Carsick Container” rolled under her feet. While she was fishing about for it, she neglected to straighten out from going around the corner and DROVE OVER THE NEIGHBOR’S FENCE. LOL
I’m sure it’s alot funnier memory to me than it is to her.
What a clever young lady you have! I’m impressed!
Fantastic tip! Thanks for sharing! =)
Smart idea!
Wow…8 children and two adults eating in the car! Amazing. Your idea is a really great one. I’ll pass this one on to my daughter-in-laws. Love your blog. Great picture too.
This is a great idea! Thanks for sharing. We always kept paper lunch bags on hand for carsickness…cups probably work better. ?
How do you squeeze 10 people in a car, especially when a good 1/3 of them have to sit in car seats? I’d love to know! I grew up in a large family before the “seat belt” laws and smaller cars. I have four kids now, but it was still tough when they were little. How do you all do it??? I’d love to know.
Sunny,
Over the years we have moved from a subcompact car (great on gas) to a minivan (needed that 6th and 7th seat) to a Suburban with 3 benches. That gave us 9 seats.
Now with 8 children we’re in a 15 passenger van with a few extra seats. We’ll have to start finding husbands for the older girls before too long…
This is a good idea. The only problem I foresee is that making the kids finish one course before they get the next one might encourage them to overeat and/or to eat more of something than they need. For example, fries prob have less nutrition in them than a burger does.
Maybe you could just have the girls give you the wrappers when they’ve had all they want - regardless of whether they’ve actually eaten all the food for that course. Maybe that’s what you meant anyway.
I’m not sure. Anyway, just something I thought of.
I love your blog. Keep it up!
katherine,
You’re right - I would never require a child to finish her fries in order to get a burger. We’re conservative when we buy fast food (esp. the really empty stuff), so they nearly always share fries. And if somebody didn’t want hers, she would be free to give them away or pass them back up.
More fries for me that way…