I suck in the kitchen. If you asked me to make you a sandwich, I would have to go to the cupboard or refrigerator a few times to end up with all the right ingredients. Then I could at least competently assemble the sandwich. My family also loves antipasto salads, which are basically just like a sandwich without bread.

If you asked me to assemble 10 different sandwiches, and 1 antipasto salad, some of which I'm seeing for the firs time, I would attempt to gather all the ingredients, but ultimately end up going back and forth between the cupboard and refrigerator still. I might even think, on one of those trips, hey, I don't need the mayo anymore, so I can put it away, only to have to go back and get it again for a later sandwich. The end result would probably be all the ingredients for every sandwich on the counter at the same time, as I should have done.

I'm pretty smart though. I'm good at Abstraction. So, I assume I'm going to get another order from the family for a sizable amount of sandwiches and some more antipasto salad. I name each sandwich and salad type and then write down a list of ingredients for each sandwich so I can cross-reference it to assemble a master list of all required ingredients per sandwich when the next order comes in. I can then go to the cupboard and refrigerator once.

I then order each sandwich type by their shared ingredients, so that I can apply ingredients only once until I'm done with that ingredient (and then I could put it away, but I'm not a premature optimizer). The only issue is that some ingredients require slicing, like tomatoes, and tomatoes aren't sliced in the same manner for the salad as the sandwiches, and my daughter can't stand when the tomatoes and lettuce touch on her sandwich, and my other daughter wants the cheese and the meat separate. I don't want to overcomplicate the problem, but I don't want to Repeat Myself either, since I know I can grab the tomatoes and slice them all up in the same step, so I need to remember when I assemble my list of ingredients per sandwich and salad that some are exempt from the ordered application of ingredients and must be handled by a single, separate script for assembly.

I run this process a few times, and it works, but I learn that it takes me 35 minutes to do, and that there's now a hard requirement on a frozen item involved with one of the sandwiches that it not be out for more than 10 minutes, so now this ingredient itself must be exempted from the step where I grab all ingredients and my assembly instructions for the one sandwich that involves this ingredient must be very clear that I will still also need to grab that ingredient.

Then I learn/realize:

In-fact, 90% of the time I make a sandwich, or salad, I only make one at a time.

Nobody wants to order sandwiches by name, they just want to give me a list of ingredients in the right order

I am gradually making so many more sandwiches every day that my kitchen counterspace cannot support getting all the ingredients at once

I only make the same sandwiches + one salad every day to the exact same specification