The Tupperware Cupboard

I don’t know about you, but we have a Tupperware cupboard.

Not that it contains any actual Tupperware mind you, because nobody can afford that stuff, regardless of how many free canapés you get at the parties.

No, ours contains a mass of that Taiwanese rip-off Tupperware, and consists largely of smallish containers to seal up leftovers so they can be put into the fridge. Leftover Chinese, leftover chicken wings, leftover stir-fry, leftover half tomatoes, left over pretty-well-you-name-it.

Storing leftovers in this fashion is highly effective.

First, it’s neat, and I’ve observed that always scores highly on the female priority list.

Second, when the left overs have finally rotted into a soup (because who eats left overs anyway), there is no smell to worry about.

Finally, when you realise there are new life forms that have evolved to the light industrial stage in the container at the back of the fridge, and will soon have evolve to the stage where limited nuclear exchanges between rival colonies of slime creatures are probable, you can chuck the entire container into the trash without getting your fingers dirty. Or your neighbours finding out. Which is always important.

Very convenient is “Tupperware”. A product of our disposable times where we can kid ourselves into feeling better about throwing things away by storing them in the fridge for a few weeks first.

But I have a problem with our collection of plastic containers. At last count we have 4,298 containers, and 5 lids. I know this because the process of finding a container to fit whatever it is you intend to throw away, and then attempting to find a matching lid for it, involves emptying the entire contents of the cupboard and spreading it out over the floors of the adjoining two rooms.

I have no idea where all the lids have gone. All I know is that the only lids we have don’t appear to match any of the containers. I have theorised that there is the same sort of portal into e-space at the back of the dishwasher that exists at the back of the drier for socks. But I’ve never found any socks in the dishwasher, so I’m probably on weak ground there.

We have the same problem with cutlery. I don’t know about you, but some types of cutlery seem further down the food chain that other types. Large spoons, for example, appear to be the lion kings of the knife and fork draw. They are not only surviving, they are multiplying. We have approximately 3,000 desert and soup spoons. We have stuffed as many as will fit into the normal cutlery draw, but there is a whole separate draw in the sideboard for the remaining spoons.

Tea spoons, on the other hand, are down the bottom of the pecking order. Finding a clean teaspoon in the draw results in a celebration that can last for days. The only thing I can think of to explain this phenomenon is that, in the dark of night, teaspoons are evolving into soup spoons. Knives seem to be about the next most rare implement we have, followed fairly closely by forks. But the big spoons rule.

When I die, I want to come back as a soup spoon please. And it occurs to me just now that burying me in a big Tupperware container would be fairly practical idea as well. Or perhaps not. I can just see them trying to find a lid that will fit.