Excellent Lunch Logistics: How to Fit Packing Lunch Every Day into Your Schedule

I pack lunch every morning before work, and I am not a very disciplined person.  This would be a recipe for disaster (and for frequent trips to the disappointing salad bar at the office cafeteria) if I didn't make it easy on myself.  I have some tricks that make packing lunch less of a pain in the ass:

• Cook a load of pre-leftovers on Sunday afternoon that can be eaten for lunch the rest of the week.  Freeze some so they don't go bad on Thursday.
• Know everything that's going in the lunch before you start packing (perhaps the night before or even the weekend before) -- groggy predawn indecision is the enemy of a well-packed lunch.
• Never run out of possible side dishes.  Have backups in the pantry.
• Do the dishes when you get home from work so your lunchbox/tupperware is clean.
• In case of dishwashing failure or laziness, be sure to have extra tupperware and/or lunch boxes.
• Consider also having backup main dishes in case you don't cook enough lunch on Sunday.  We keep frozen samosas around most of the time, but soon we'll transition to tamales.

In the end, it all comes down to having a backup for every step of the lunch-packing process (even your brain).  Otherwise a single glitch could derail all your delicious plans and leave you lunchless.