It’s an annual problem: Girl Scout cookies are only sold for a short amount of time, so you have to buy them now, but you want to enjoy them later as well as now, and that is very hard, especially if they are Thin Mints or Caramel deLites. I’m a pro at this, so here are my tips:
The cookies my children know about.
- Buy a lot of them. Like, all of them. Start a savings account in your bank just for Girl Scout cookies and autodeposit a small amount per paycheck NOW so that next year you’ll be ready.
- Take a generous number of boxes inside your house, in full view of everyone. Say, “I’m so awesome! Look at all these Girl Scout cookies I bought!”
- Don’t bother to label the individual boxes as belonging to one person or another or to dole them out fairly or to buy your children small safes to keep them in. These tricks won’t work. (I know–I’ve tried.) Just let them eat what they want, when they want them. These kids are inheriting a burning planet. Let them have unlimited Peanut Butter Patties for a few days.
- Then, under cover of night, bring in the other boxes. Remove a box or two. Think about something currently in storage but that you will retrieve within six months OR something currently on display but that you will put away in a few months. Beach towels? Easter decorations? Hide the cookies with these other items (or in the empty space where you will the currently displayed items when you are done with them). These are your two “I totally forgot about these!” boxes, and they are just for you.
- For the rest: hide them. Like REALLY hide them. Ours are in the crawlspace of the cellar, which is through the basement, and, trust me, no one wants to go there. Other good places: in a waterproof chest at the bottom of the koi pond, in the go-bag you’ll use in case of natural disaster evacuation (because you would not want to leave cookies behind), or in a block of ice. The trick to a good hiding place is that it must be both physically difficult to access AND unappealing. So, while hiding a box of Thin Mints behind the peas in the freezer seems tricky, it is not. As soon as you do that, your kids will decide they need a bag of frozen peas for something. Consider labeling the spot where you hid them in some kind of frightening way, like in a box in the storage closet labeled “old taxes.” Or tell them that the previous owner died in the cellar, so they should never go there, just in case it’s haunted. You know your children and their unique fears best.
- Put a reminder in your electronic calendar to alert you in four months to find the cookies. Include the location, because it’s possible that you forgot. Or even take a picture on your phone and include it in the reminder.
Family Foxhole 