After I decided to prep my work-from-home lunches the day before, I found myself with more time, energy, and greater focus.
Though you are relieved from the humdrum of working in an office, working from home comes with its own barrel of issues ranging from mildly annoying to outright horrible. One such annoyance is making lunch.
Work-from-home lunches got really complicated
I have been working from home for nearly four years, so naturally, I’ve spent most of my lunch breaks in my kitchen. The idea of making lunch while working remotely sounds pretty stellar, after all, you’re close to just about everything you could need, and there’s no expenditure on Starbucks, or McDonald’s.
At first, it seemed a little pointless to make food the night before when I would be mere meters from my fridge during the following day’s shift. Instead, as my break rolled around, I would take myself off into the kitchen to whizz up dishes like salads, cous cous, soup, and toasties. Pretty simple stuff.
I soon found that as I began to experiment with cooking more, the food I actually wanted to eat required more effort than slamming a piece of meat between two slices of bread. As you can imagine, most of my lunch break was soon taken up by chopping, frying, baking, and trying to use one of those frustrating avocado slicers.
Things changed when, at the start of the year, in an effort to streamline my life without uttering the dreaded “new year, new me” anecdote, I decided to make some changes. One such change was making my lunch the night before, and I have not looked back.
The wonderful world of meal prep
Meal prepping is not something especially new but it has seen new light recently thanks to social media apps like TikTok and Instagram. On the platforms, users would record themselves making meals days, weeks, and sometimes even months in advance.
Though I had no intention of going quite so overboard, there had to be a reason so many people were cutting back on the chaos with meal prep.
As it turns out, only 44% of people reported doing meal prep on a regular basis, suggesting that the trend is not as prevalent as I first thought. Still, I soldiered on to see what the fuss was about.
The first thing I noticed on my lunch prep journey was the way I could better portion and control what I was putting in my body. Previously, I would cook too much food and find myself eating it all instead of throwing it in the trash.
By prepping my food the night before, I accurately reduced my waste while ensuring that I was well-fed the following day. Subsequently, I was also able to pack my lunchtime meal with as much nutrition as possible without the rush of needing to get back to work.
Finally, and arguably the biggest positive to come from my work-from-home lunches, was the overwhelming amount of time I had to kill. Because I was no longer cooking for up to an hour, I was able to do other productive things. By productive things, I of course mean TikTok and playing with the dog.
