It’s 4:30 p.m. Do you know what your family is eating for dinner?

I never had days-of-the-week underpants. It always seemed like a strange concept to me. Do you have to do laundry at the same time every week? What happens if you lose one day’s pair? Is buying two sets cheating? And was Sally telling the truth about why they don’t make Sunday?

The whole days-of-the-week strategy seemed rigid in a way that could never work for me. But this summer, I realized that there was an area of my life where the concept might work. Ten years of motherhood and the associated family dinners have wrecked any notion of decent cooking. Usually, around 4:30 p.m., my husband or I realize we are responsible for feeding three small humans in just over an hour. Panic sets in, because neither of us are natural cooks and therefore we’re terrible improvisers in the kitchen. We end up with pasta, quesadillas, or, far too frequently, take-out. It’s not healthy, environmentally sound, or great role modeling for our kids.

And so I learned to embrace Taco Tuesday.

Taco Tuesday started out as a joke this summer. If we happened to eat Mexican food on a Tuesday, it was dubbed Taco Tuesday with great enthusiasm. Once every few weeks, we prepared actual tacos, and everyone was so happy that we decided to make it a standard operating procedure for our family during the school year. It’s really helped us. The kids like it. Prep is simple and quick. Occasionally, you can get creative, adding fresh corn or making guacamole if you have extra avocados lying around. And there is a convenient take-out option that rests firmly within the boundaries, so we have an out when we need it. But most importantly, it eliminates the decision fatigue that was killing our family meal times. My husband and I can rely on having one night a week where we don’t have to think about what’s for dinner. That brutal moment at 4:30 p.m. is spent working on things we need to get done, not cobbling together three-day-old rotisserie chicken and wilted lettuce into a pseudo-salad that leaves everybody hungry, dissatisfied, and a little depressed.

It’s been working so well that today I realized we needed to embrace this structure. But where can we go from here?

Thanks to The Lego Movie, the first companion day occurred to me right away.

Freedom Friday will liberate us from the rules that govern the rest of the week. The meal doesn’t necessarily have to be healthy. We can eat in front of the TV and drink soda. It might involve some paper plates or plastic packaging. (I’d still like to avoid industrial meat, but we’ll see.) This more or less conforms to what we were already doing on Fridays, but by naming it, by branding it, we make it more special, a unified moment our family can look forward to. We also differentiate it from other days of the week, so we know that on a Thursday when there’s homework and activities, it’s probably not a good day to eat pizza on paper plates in front of the TV. Because we get to do that tomorrow, on Freedom Friday!

I like it already, and it’s only Tuesday.

What next?

Meatless Monday, the original day-of-the-week online meal plan, was a failure in our family. I love the societal good in it, but it gives too much leeway and not enough guidance. If my husband or I have to enter the words “meal ideas for…” into a search engine, or text each other detailed shopping lists, then it’s not going to work. So Monday’s up for grabs.

Stakeholder Saturday (or Sunday) is a clunky name I came up with for something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, which is have the whole family work together on planning, shopping for, and cooking dinner one night. I could see this working on a weekend and possibly even growing into a tradition (though it would definitely require a better name). We’ll be trying that.

But that leaves four days wide open, more yawning abyss than blue sky….

So let’s hear it, Internet. Because days-of-the-week underpants might take a break on Sunday, but we break bread together every evening of every day of every week of every year of our lives. And I need to come up with a plan for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday/Sunday, because I want to look forward to and never dread those many years ahead of family dinners together.

Bonus points for a snappy, alliterative name.