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08/13/2004
Tupperware
The plastic containers are in the left bottom drawer of our kitchen's center island. It's a deep drawer, perfect for Tupperware but inconveniently located. Every time you want to put away that last dab of floor cake, you have to crouch down and scrabble through the drawer in search of the perfect vessel, exactly the right size, with a matching lid that seals with a pleasing pff.
I arranged the kitchen three years ago while Paul was away one weekend, according to how I imagined we'd use it, putting cooking utensils in the drawers nearest the stove, for example, knives and peelers in the island, cutting boards directly below. I got a little crazy with the P-Touch. If our home is ever burgled, the intruders will know exactly where to find PAPER/PLASTIC GOODS, FLATWARE, THINGS THAT ARE SHARP, and SNACKS OF ALL NATIONS. (If they slice off a fingertip while rummaging through the knife drawer, they can creep upstairs and rifle through the medicine cabinet — perhaps they will be interested in SKIN INJURY. If their spree through the kitchen gives them indigestion, they will find the antacids filed under ONE SPICY MEATBALL. Diarrhea? UNMENTIONABLES.)
But back to the Tupperware drawer. I know full well why I located it there, bending the last three years. When I'd visited a friend and watched her squat low to get containers out, I'd seen her toddler stumble-race across the room to plunge his hands into the drawer. "I did that on purpose," she said, as her son pulled out tall square after tall square. "He can't break anything in there, and it keeps him busy while I work."
We choose the house with the extra bedrooms, thinking we'll fill them soon. We buy a single outfit, yellow or green, fuzzy, with feet. We rehearse how we'll tell our husbands the news, starting the first month we try. We store the Tupperware low.
Yeah, we start early. Some of us way too early.
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My 2yo has been on a snowshoes kick. He takes two big pieces of Tupperware from the bottom drawer and slides around the house with his feet inside them. Makes for cute pictures but it also means our Tupperware drawer is a whole lot more chaotic than yours.
Wishing you a speedy end to your Tupperware tidiness (at the hands of a cute toddler).
I did the same thing - even before I had my daughter. She loves the cabinet - spends hours in there playing with things she can't destroy (bummer for her). Looks like you'll be using it the same way I do soon!! :)
But junior can't make enough noise with just tupperware! Throw some pot lids and wooden spoons in that drawer too. :)
I still have my bottle cabinet stocked with all my daughter's old bottles, nipples and accessories. She'll be 4 in a few months, gave up baby bottles years ago. But, it was such a convenient location and to move them would mean I was giving up on having another.
Not only do we start early, but we never give it up.
Trust me, starting early *never* hurts. Our one-and-a-half year old has already claimed his own drawer in the kitchen, which is filled with oversized plastic spoons and baby snacks. I never even thought of Tupperware. That's an awesome idea.
I love your cabinets, drawer handles, and flooring. I was so interested in the pictures, and so eager to tell you how kick-ass your kitchen is, that I almost didn't finish reading the entry. Hee.
Yeah, it's amazing to me how much *stuff* is implicated in all this pregnancy hoping. I'm trying my best to resist. But we are about to move to a house with an extra bedroom, which it will take all my psychic energy to keep from thinking of as "the empty baby's bedroom." And also, now that I've read your post, when we move I will certainly be tempted to put the tupperware in the bottom drawer.
I love your IVF quilt idea, by the way.
True, true. Even those of us who can't bring ourselves to buy the outfit, I've mentally arranged the nursery, bought a parenting book and memorized all seven pregnancy books I own.
Trust me, starting early *never* hurts.
Actually...it does kinda hurt, every time you walk past that empty bedroom. But I don't think we can do any different.
The little stuffed giraffe I guiltily bought in Paris during our "last vacation without kids" (HA! Two years after that, still no kid) spent a long while waiting for a baby, but when he came, it was his favourite, and now, at 3.5, he still can't live without it. "JaWAF."
I did this switcheroo in the kitchen: cleaning chemicals that were under the sink did a doh-see-doh with the tupperware and metal loaf pans in the shoulder-high cabinet. And the bottom drawer of the utensil area became "things the baby couldn't break."
Unfortunately, I still had a glass pitcher in the very bottom of a cabinet of pots and pans and within a week of coming home at seven months old, Nico found it, broke it, and cut himself on it. While I was cleaning up the shards, he found the open dishwasher door and managed to slice the hell out of his finger on a sharp part of it (letter to Asko: "Dear Sirs--because a woman never would have done this--, You CANNOT have anything a kid could cut themselves on in the door of a dishwasher! Morons!") and blood was everywhere. Hysteria ensued all around.
Oh yes, I started early, but then when I encountered the unforecast and unforseen, I was that much more devastated!
Just a few weeks ago I rearranged my kitchen...and moved the tupperware to the lowest drawers in my kitchen.
Hmmm...perhaps Ziploc knows something my RE and reproductive organs do not?
That was beautifully said Julie.
My nursery is now referred to as "future nursery", I still have hope and get little things every now and then. It will be perfect, I just pray it gets some use.
yes, you're right Julie, it does hurt.
Before we started TTC, I'd be knitting baby stuff for other people. Family members said "You should start knitting for yourself, you'll not have time when you're pg." So I did. I have a big plastic box full of stuff. It's beautiful, and I loved thinking about my future child as I knitted, imagining how lovely it would be to put it on my child and know I made it for them; looking at how tiny the clothes were and imagining the utter sweetness of having a child that tiny of my own.
I've not been able to knit baby things for well over a year now - it makes me too sad.
The box is a great resource for baby showers for other people, though. It hurts to take things out of it - giving up on my own dreams, knowing other people are getting what I want, without even trying. I feel like by the time I do have a child - which may well be adopted, and too big to wear the tiniest things - I'll have given away all my stash, as I'm giving up on my dreams.
yea, some of us start early.
we bought the house with 4 bedrooms and big yard 8 years ago thinking we'd fill the rooms someday...well, we have a big office, guest room and craft room instead.
I love my labelmaker too!
hee hee. Not long after my 4th miscarriage I bought a new coffee table and end table for my living room. I picked the ones with the nice rounded corners so the kids who didn't yet exist wouldn't crack their little heads on the sharp corners. Eventually they did exist and both they and the tables survived toddlerhood. Not just plastic ware but potatoes and onions make great kitchen toys. Keep them accessible!
HAHAHAHA! My mom is a Tupperware distributor. I grew up playing in that drawer and have it all stocked up for when my someday baby is here.
-AmyY
P.S. Okay, well I didn't grow UP playing in it, I mean after I was sixteen or seventeen is wasn't quite as amusing.
First of all, you and I have the same cabinets: http://hardscrabble.typepad.com/photos/cabinets/cabinets2.jpg
Second, yeah, I started early. Way too early. But I now have enough tupperware to entertain the triplets: http://hardscrabble.typepad.com/photos/cabinets/tupperware.jpg
And for god's sake, what's with the labeling?
I don't mean to sound disrespectful - I too am a labeling freak - but why are the labels on the inside of the drawer? If you are opening up the drawer, you'll kind of figure out the contents anyway, right?
But maybe there is a secret to this method of madness that I can incorporate into my own freakishly organized home. So spill it, Julie.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Haven't yet let myself buy anything green or yellow. The house...check. The bedrooms...check. Good schools, good doctors, good play areas with natural resources...check. Extra income...check. Baby? Yeah well, still working on it.
I do the same thing, for the exact same reason. Only we have LOADS of Tupperware - more than any one family would ever need. And child that stumbles upon it will be overjoyed - there are hours of entertinment in that cabinet.
I have a pair of rain boots with yellow duckies, spoons with flames, slippers with sharks (I'm a parrothead) and enough stuffed animals and children books to make 100 kids happy. All that and no baby. Someday I hope to have a baby to read to and to feed with the flame spoons. Till then I have hope. And blogs...
Danae, not only do we have the same cabinets, we have the same handles (though ours are in a matte finish) AND faucet! I'd post a pic too if I had a digital camera...
Count me in to the Tupperware in low drawers group. Ours is there for the same reason and our little guy loves digging around in there. I also keep my canned goods low and my glass jars high for the same reason. You can build some pretty impressive things out of cans of tuna and tomato paste!
Shawna,
Our handles are waaaaaaay better than Julie's handles.
Oh hell I didnt realise how disorganised I am. My poor baby is probably going to poke an eye out, stab someone or end up buried under plastic containers if he ever gets into my kitchen. Lucky for him he has to get over the baby gate. Wonder how long thats going to take him??
Y'all's handles suck ass.
I've been going through and reading all of your posts since the latest faint pink line appeared, rooting for you. Didn't feel the need to comment before now, but I have to say that your paragraph about the labeling made me laugh so hard I sobbed, then read the text out loud to my husband, laughing hysterically and sobbing even harder. Some of it's probably hormones, I'm sure (I am also pregnant), but it's mostly just SO DAMN FUNNY.
Best of luck with the pregnancy (and the child-rearing).
I feel almost guilty thinking about all the cleaning supplies that are still piled up under our sink... I've thought about moving it, really, I promise... Our house isn't quite as childproof as it should be, so I can never fully relax when friends with small children come around. Definately haven't started too soon with that!
But boy, does that spare bedroom hurt when I walk past it...
Oh man, I found you by googling long tupperware spoons! You are singing my song. I think with every month that goes by, we get new baby things: clothes, cloth diapers, car seat (Britax for the baby we don't have yet. It was free.)and the list goes on...