Last week, I rearranged my tupperware cupboard. Do you have a tupperware cupboard? One whole kitchen cupboard dedicated solely to plastic storage boxes? If not, quite honestly, what have you been doing with your life?
Previously, all of my tupperware was at the bottom of a kitchen cupboard and the chaos was palpable. Like a flash of lightning on the road to Damscus, it suddenly occured to me that the bottom cupboard was an inconvenient location for items that I use so frequently. Whilst crouching down to retrieve the relevant box was definitely adding to my daily squat count, it was also extremely annoying. Add to this the fact that I could never locate the matching lid for said box and the whole thing was becoming something of a nightmare, the kind of ridiculous domestic trigger that can tip you over the edge.
Not only was the cupboard inconveniently located, it was also a total mess. Is it only my plastic storage boxes that multiply like gremlins? One day I’ve got a tidy little stack of three, the next morning they’ve somehow birthed a blended family of seventeen, none of which are the same size or shape. Most infuriatingly of all, they all look like they are the same size and shape, but when you try to marry them up they suddenly declare irreconcilable differences. I shudder to estimate how many hours of my life I have spent hunting for the correct tupperware lid. Tupperware lids are treacherous liars. You pull one out with confidence, thinking finally, this is the one, only to find that it’s a centimetre too long and wobbles on top of the box like a toddler’s drawing of a hat. Meanwhile, the lid that should fit has vanished into the void along with odd socks and your sanity. You try every single lid in the pile, and somehow none of them are right, even though you definitely own at least four of that exact same box. I mean, what is going on? How many versions of a plastic box can there be in the world?!
I am not the only one with this problem, I assure you. I recall having this conversation with a colleague several years ago. Like me, she would often bring her lunch into school in a tupperware box. One day, I noticed that her box was labelled with a letter of the alphabet and asked her what that was about. She told me that she had labelled all of the boxes and their lids, in the hope that this would help her to match the right box with the right lid and thus solve all of her tupperware-based problems.
“Has it worked?” I asked.
“No,” she said, grimly.
Now, I tell you, these anxieties are in the past. Since I dedicated an hour’s planning and labour to my tupperware management, I am in a brave new world. I have taken back control. Boxit means Boxit and there will be no more stray migrant lids entering my sacred space via any route, authorised or unauthorised. My borders are tightly controlled and every single box — not to mention its lid — has its own ID card and legitimate address. I police the area with sniffer dogs. Every single box knows its place and there will be no rebellions. When it comes to tupperware, I’ve gone full authoritarian. The area is laid out with military precision. China is taking note.
It’s quite remarkable how tackling a domestic problem that’s been draining your energy since time immemorial can feel like a kind of therapy. My life is genuinely improved. I mean, obviously, this is all relative. When I lie in bed at night, pondering the value of my existence and my contribution to the world at large, I don’t actually comfort myself with the thought that I can at least look back on some well-managed tupperware. We’re not talking the enlightenment here. What we are talking is that a stupidly annoying little thing that has been winding me up on a daily basis has now been sorted out, with quite remarkable ease given how long the problem has been niggling at me. Now, I can locate exactly the right box with exactly the right lid whenever I need one and it’s genuinely bizarre how much of a difference it has made to my daily irritation levels.
In all seriousness, this daft little episode has made me wonder just how many other minor domestic hassles I could improve with a little thought and application. We are creatures of habit and it’s amazing how long we can continue to go about things in a way that causes us a degree of low-level stress when it isn’t really necessary. I am now pondering what other minor bugbears I can eliminate from my life and thus resolve further daily headaches. I might even get through less Nurofen.
