Martha Cooney

Let’s get this out of the way up front: there’s already been a lot written about tupperware. The canon is deep, and even though I didn’t delve into it while I prepared this reflection – the same way Eminem doesn’t listen to other rappers when he records an album – I know it’s out there. 

 

Guess what? There are only seven original stories in the world*, and Shakespeare cycled through all of them. I’m not a special snowflake, and this is my tupperware experience. Now that you know what to expect, you’re free to leave and pick up Anna Karenina, or come along for the ride. We begin, like so many pilgrimages, in The Container Store.

 

I went with Jeff on a Saturday to buy a freezable lunch bag. It wasn’t my first time there; I know I have to assess how vulnerable I am to their promises of a better life: If in the past twenty-four hours I’ve read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, I’m in no shape to enter. 

 

I felt strong today as I did a scan of the space. The Container Store has married Bed Bath and Beyond (weird to think about their wedding registry, because they are the registry) so the combo store had every type of home item along with organization products. A handbag storage cubby in Closet Systems whispered from six aisles deep. Come, little one. I can fix everything. My friends and I are here to help you. I turned away from the view of other aisles and entered the tupperware maternity ward: the kitchen area. 

 

(For the purposes of this story, we’re going to use “tupperware,” as a generic term, the same way we’d use “Kleenex” for any brand of tissue. I choose to lowercase – discuss if you wish, but don’t bring it up to me. Let’s move along.)

 

How many tupperwares do you have in your home? I’ve got 137, and if you add reusable beverage containers, we’re at a round 150. Is this excessive? If you can face yourself in the mirror, count your own. (Rules: Food storage only; all containers of any material count; no orphans missing a top or vice versa.)

 

I like tupperware; it saves time and saves food, which means it saves money – every artist’s favorite sport. An unused leftover makes me twitch. 

 

(Collaborating) “There’s a couple bites of pasta left. Do you want to absorb that or should I?”

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(Accusing) “What’s happening with this rice?” 

 

(Ashamed) “I let the plums go soft. I had to sacrifice two.”

 

I was born with it – you should see my mom – but my talent for food efficiency and organization was dormant until I worked as an overnight camp counselor. In the cafeteria, I was fascinated by Al, who ran the kitchen in a backwards hat and turned out breakfast, lunch and dinner for four hundred. He barked offensive-coordinator plays to his staff and slung every new hot mashed potato pan into place the second the first one ran out. He knew exactly how many vegetarian meals were on the list. Even if your group was last called to line, there were more than enough hash browns and they were fully cooked. It was clean, it was fast, it was tight, it moved like a dance-heavy Broadway show, the milk dispenser was never empty, and he left it all on the field.  After a night’s performance Al sat down and read the sports page while he ate. He was a king. (I did once find a macaroni from lunch stuck to a dinner fork, but no one’s perfect.) 

 

I didn’t talk about it aloud, but a seed was planted. I’ll get on that stage. One day I saw Al in the kitchen writing out menus and assessing huge cans of tomato sauce on the storage rack. It hit me that this was the secret to the show. 

 

Since then, in all my food service jobs, I took longer than I needed in the walk-in fridge and admired prepared pans of chicken, wrapped, stacked and masking-tape-labeled, and noted the type of box salad greens lived in. Dry storage was even better: mega spice canisters with printed labels, deli containers of salt and pepper packets, stacked in towers, and the cans, oh, the cans! I hung around the chefs and read over their shoulders when they did inventory. (“Get the f#@$ out of my kitchen!”)  

 

I’ll never be at the highest level, but I can be in the game. After four decades of living I have my own small kingdom of food storage. I’m in charge, but it’s the players on the team that matter, and that’s the tupperware. 

 

With 150 of them, you have to have an org chart with clear hierarchies of responsibility. Multiples in large, medium, and mini have their own departments. Lids have an adjoining office and report to containers, not the other way around. Circulars have their own cubicle, but it doesn’t have windows. Glass jars are above old yogurt containers in rank. 

 

I don’t look too long at the basement shelf. Nobody wants to get close to the borrowed Pyrex; it could be around in four months or gone tomorrow. The takeout container knows he’s on death row and wishes we’d get it over with. We don’t talk about the jilted lidless 7.5 x 7.5 x 10 that holds cleaning supplies. There’s no point holding out hope. 

 

Some members have career pivots. I gave tenure to a flat glass container in the fridge for permanent storage of natural peanut butter (try it; it’s the best thing you’ll ever do.) Every couple weeks Jeff acknowledges he took its availability for granted and says sadly, “You never know when it’s the last time you pick up your kid.”

 

When there’s a complete re-org the team holds town halls to complain while I bring everyone in one by one to re-interview. 

 

ME: Why are you applying for the position of soup holder?

 

ZIPLOCK BRAND DELI CONTAINER: I’m already in this job!

 

ME: And what value do you think you bring to the team currently?

 

That scam artist Voltaire got credit for someone else saying Il meglio è l'inimico del bene – perfect is the enemy of good – and any time I look at my tupperware and start thinking too hard, I have to check myself. It’s easy to swan dive down the rabbit hole and think I can achieve the ultimate organization system. It’s a fine and dangerous line between passion and delusion, and in The Container Store you’re walking it every step. 

 

Like I said, the day we went, I wasn’t worried about my ability to restrain myself, because I had a focused goal – the lunch bag. Still. I like to look. 

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I walked down the kitchen storage aisle that had every size and shape container in clear plastic and glass designed for you to empty your Swedish Fish and coconut flakes, respectively, into for maximum visibility. I admit I dabble in decanting; I like my oats in a mason jar. But there’s a lot of tough questions. Where do I draw the line? What about refilling? When I decant and there’s some left over, then I have an upstairs-downstairs situation with the ugly-packaged backstock kept in the dark like a secret wife. Other things aren’t practical. I’ve seen photos of Oreos stacked in a spiral-shell Guggenheim-style staircase design inside a clear glass cylinder. It’s a house of cards. A kid grabs one and the whole thing collapses. 

 

Once things go in clear jars they become rootless. They’re like a rescue dog: “We think the raw unsalted cashews are between three months and two years old.” With no birth certificate, you’re just a pretzel thin who showed up one day with a duffel bag and said, “I had no life before this.”

 

Labels help. I looked at the pre-printed pantry labels for sale in packs of 156. They didn’t have a system for updating expiration dates but did tell you what your pantry should have: legumes, monkfruit, chickpea pasta, arrowroot. (“You have arrowroot? What’s that?” “I don’t know. I think it’s a type of poison.”)

 

Once I was in Target and saw a kid ask her mom what they were getting. “You don’t go in Target knowing what you’re getting,” the mom said. “Target tells you what to get.”

 

Anyway, do I want everything on my counter to be see-through? Shouldn’t we all keep a little mystery? On the other hand, other people’s stock is useful for conversation starters. 

 

Who was I kidding? I wanted the dream. I had a good thing going at home, but couldn’t it be better? I felt emotion stirring in my gut at the vision of matching canisters of dry goods grouped by family. After a tough day I could stand and look quietly at a row of ordered shelves. I could eat from seed jars like a sparrow. I could have so much more tupperware, and everyone would have specific assignments; shapes corresponding to fruit type and fridge-zone dimensions measured to order. It would be beautiful. Life would be good. Everything else would fall into place, and my credit score would go up. 

 

It’s a short distance between sliding your fingers across a pop-top rectangular prism with a picture of vertical fettuccine and going off the deep end. Once they start on this track a person can reach a dark place. 

 

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SCENE:

 

A CHILD is lost in a huge pantry looking at food canisters.

 

CHILD: Mom, did you reorganize again? I can’t find the cereal. 

 

WOMAN: Refer to the new index, honey. 

 

CHILD pages through 40-page document.

 

CHILD: I don’t see it under C.

 

WOMAN: That’s because it’s under G for Grains. Think, honey. 

 

CUT TO:

WOMAN swimming through pool of plastic containers.

 

WOMAN: I just need to find the…lid for the…fridge berry bin… 

 

CUT TO:

WOMAN trapped in the pile of plastic, crying.

 

WOMAN: (sobbing): It’s okay, I just need my tear jar. 

 

She grabs a clear plastic jar and cries into it. Label reads: “Holds up to 6 ounces of tears.”

 

WOMAN (sobbing harder): I should have got the eight ounce. 

 

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I shook myself like a dog, and my eyes landed on the ProKeeper Cracker Food Storage container for 29.99 that included a rechargeable, reusable insert to help maintain low humidity for optimal storage. Get to the lunch containers before it’s too late. 

 

The lunch area had bento boxes in kiddie colors, tiered tiffin boxes; “Harvest Pod” plastic jugs with “built-in bowl” and a sauce capsule. The upscale carriers disguised as work totes tried to present as elegant, as if pulling your peanut butter sandwich out of gold-zippered black leather counteracted the fact that something feels goofy about unpacking a lunch, and as soon as you unsnap a lid, you’re six years old again struggling with a thermos of lukewarm milk. There’s no way around it. 

 

None of the lunch bags were what I was looking for. I had the feeling it was punishment. You think you can come into this store, game the system and leave without buying a new set of false promises? I don’t owe you anything. Wrap your lunch in a bindle for all I care. 

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At the end of the aisle, a staffer stocked Ball jars and hummed to himself. He gave me a friendly hello, but didn’t get involved. I could tell he knew kitchen organization is more personal than a bra fitting or wedding dress consultation. Meddling can hit deep. He stacked happily and talked to the boxes like a man tending his plants. “Oh, you’re a special one…hmm, what happened to you?” I passed him on my third trance-circle. He kept eyes on the shelf. 

 

I realized that all the other customers had the same at-the-gym protective bubble, almost tense, on their own quest for solutions and improvement. The couple near us avoided any eye contact and spoke quietly to each other. A pair of roommates in their own world picked over lemon-saver pods. It was time to get out of there. 

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I used to live in a corner studio apartment on a ground floor with big windows, and whenever my friend Jen walked her mutt, Sally Ride, down the block we talked through the window. One day I told Jen over the phone that I had a bad cold. She said she had a huge thing of soup a friend had given her that she didn’t want and she’d bring it over. 

 

Every year Jen held this Ball Off contest where people competed for best ball – meatball, matzoh ball, risotto ball, dessert ball, whatever. The guy who started Philly’s biggest compost pickup service once rigged the voting and caused a scandal. After that Jen refined her system with a two-page rule sheet. She took the opportunity to add a rule that said to bring a ball or bring nothing and warned that if you showed up with additional food, especially a bag of chips, you’d be asked to leave immediately. 

 

Jen already had a vendetta against the soup friend – I’d never met the woman – because of an incident a few weeks before, when the friend brought a full butternut squash lasagna unsolicited to Jen’s Thanksgiving table. This was a mistake for three reasons: One, Jen hated when people brought food to things she hosted and when pressed she allowed only “a small side or appetizer;" two, lasagna at Thanksgiving rubbed her the wrong way; three, she wasn’t a fan of butternut squash. (Somebody else brought turkey tacos as an appetizer. Jen was furious.)

 

When the friend – she was on a butternut squash kick – brought too much butternut squash soup to a potluck at Jen’s house a couple weeks later, she told Jen to keep the soup and return the tupperware. 

 

Jen wanted to unload her burden and I wasn’t one to turn it down. She marched the soup right over with Sally, who was wearing a pink and yellow puffer jacket that coordinated with Jen’s coat. Jen carried a huge tupperware (Rubbermaid; EasyFindLid in red; 14-cup model; part of the 2005 line) filled to the top. “Here,” she said. “Just make sure you give back the container. I have to get it back to my friend.” 

 

Sally tangled her leash around Jen’s legs and twisted up the long strap of Jen’s ice-cream-cone-shaped purse. “I’ll just give it to you through the window,” Jen said. I slid the screen open and reached out. 

 

At that exact moment she looked over at a woman coming down the street toward us. It was the friend who’d given her the soup.

 

Both Jen’s and my hands were on the woman’s tupperware of unmistakable bright orange soup. It was halfway through the window.

 

“Oh, hi,” Jen said. “My friend is sick and I was just sharing some of your soup with her. It was so good.”

 

I looked at the friend. I looked at Jen. We locked eyes.

 

Look sick, she said.

 

I am sick, I said.

 

Look sicker, she said.  

 

I thanked the stranger and said I would make sure to return the container. She acted cool, chatted with Jen for a minute, and went on her way down the street.

 

“I can’t have any further involvement in this,” I said. I emptied the soup into my own container and handed the Rubbermaid back to Jen through the open window. My landlord, who owned a business on the corner – I’ll tell you more about him another time – watched the whole thing from across the street. 

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Before we left The Container Store, Jeff got a thing that squeezes the last out of a tomato paste concentrate tube. It was four dollars with the provided coupon, and like his grandmother used to say, “Coupons are your friend.” She was a sharp lady. 

 

*The seven original stories in the world: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth.

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