It’s The Little Things
To partially quote Forrest Gump - “Mama always said...”, and thusly my mama use to say “It’s the little things in life”. Such a common phrase with such a huge meaning though. And this phrase has popped up so often in the last month I feel it necessary to touch upon it’s meaning. The picture attached to this note has some meaning to it. It’s a picture of our latest installment of AmazonFresh products prior to them being transported to their pickup location. It is not the magnitude of this installment though that I want to write about - it’s the saran wrap. “Saran wrap?! Are you kidding me?! We are really going to be reading about saran wrap??” screams the little voice in your head. To respond to the cries in your head - Yes you are and I think you will find it quite amusing. As a small business it is difficult to see the forest through the trees sometimes. And then other times it is difficult to see the trees in the forest because you are paddling across a vast ocean of concerns. This saran wrap is one of those “tree” moments. Transporting baked goods any amount of miles typically involves coolers, ice, and/or dry ice along with mechanisms used to keep the baked goods from shifting in transport. Finally there is usually a prayer involved too. In transporting our cupcakes we are usually bound by “how many coolers fit in the vehicle” discussion. For this installment to Amazon though we were up against the limit of coolers to vehicle ratio. For most of the day leading up to the time of transport it was a worrisome thought of “is there anyway to not have the vehicle filled to the brim with a lot of coolers?!” especially since it would be very late at night delivering the cupcakes and going in and out of a warehouse with several coolers is not an ideal situation. There were 2 large pros of the coolers - 1) the ice is kept contained to keep the product cool and 2) they keep the product from flying around the vehicle. There are ways to keep the product cool and at temperature without coolers though. It involves some sun visors/insulated bags and bagged ice/dry ice. We’ve done this at larger scale events to keep the products cool. Although this solves only half of the problem; the other half being “how do we keep them from going everywhere?”. And then as I was finishing wrapping up some left over cake scraps in saran wrap the answer came upon me. No duh - wrap the 4 packs in stacks and instead of using coolers you can use the smaller area of your husband’s hatchback like trunk to stack them in the insulators with ice! Once at the drop off facility, cart in the stacks (because the stacks fit on carts easier than coolers), dispose of ice, clean off insulators and away you go! But folks; do you know how idiotic I felt after pondering this question of cooler to vehicle ratio for most of the day? I felt absolutely abysmal at my lack of intelligence to realize wrap-ice-insulate-and-go answer. Such a small issue with an even smaller answer I felt compared to the plethora of other concerns that come with running the bakery. But this small victory, this small answer was making me feel like an absolute champion of the universe. My son happened to witness my enthusiasm during a slight celebration of this victory. He was puzzled and all I could think of to say was “Son - it’s the little things”. I then shared the story to my husband along with sharing my feelings of idiocy. His immediate response was “Hon(ey), it is the little things. You should be happy.”. And I am. So thank you saran wrap. I may curse you because you bunch up when you aren’t supposed to and/or you do not come off of the roll how you should and/or you think it’s ok for your box cutter to slice me from time to time. No, no, no, it’s ok, I promise. Because you solved this problem for me I will defer to tolerance when having to deal with you in the future. And I have taken stock into the little things. Whether it is saran wrap, or it is just enough batter to not be a full cupcake (but we’ll bake it anyway), or sitting in traffic on a hot day with no air conditioning or radio but three people around me have their windows down with their radio on; these are the little moments that calm us and make us realize - wait; there is not all bad here. There is not all “problems” here. In fact, there is a lot of small things that are adding up to some really big moments. Time to celebrate all the moments.
