Unless you're from my generation or the parent of someone growing up in the 60s or 70s, you probably won't get the reference. But every single time I open my Tupperware cabinet trying to find a lid to match the molded plastic bowl, I find myself emulating Muttley's "rashin' frashin'" comments under my breath.
I just hate that cabinet.
I'm an organizer. It's how I make it through the day — a place for everything and everything in its place. I wouldn't sleep nights any other way.
But that stupid cabinet... it's the exception to the rule.
When my kids were little, I remember spending a lot of time on the floor placing those orange, yellow, green and red plastic rings on the rocking pillar. Over and over and over. Then they advanced to the toys where we'd put the different shaped blocks in to the corresponding hole of some kind of contraption. Of course, there were always 'nesting' toys around. I remember thinking how smart my little human beings were that they could fit each brightly colored object inside one after the other.
Then they became teenagers.
Suddenly nothing fit anywhere.
Clothes that came out of their drawers wouldn't fit back in to their drawers once they took them out to just look at a shirt they'd worn 50 times. Clothes I had washed, dried and hung or folded and stacked neatly on shelves in their closets were never placed back quite the same way once they entered and exited the closet dressing for school in the mornings.
That situation sort of worked itself out, for the most part, once they entered adult life and established their own residences — although, I continue to threaten my two oldest home-owning kids, Josh and Avery, that one day I will show up in their driveways with boxes of Hot Wheels, baseball cards, Polly Pockets, Beanie Babies, prom and winter formals and all that other 'stuff' in my basement they insisted I hold on to for them. (Since Carson is still in college and still an apartment dweller, he falls under a 'grace period.')
However, with the kids gone, somehow that Tupperware cabinet remains in disarray.
I've tried to come up with solutions for storing those containers that cause me such angst. And it's not just me.
I have to listen to Mick's tirade each morning as he rummages through the same cabinet looking for the elusive lid to the chosen bowl.
So anyway...
I think it's finally time for action. I'm going to look for an answer on Pinterest. I'm pretty sure if I'm not able to find the resolution there, one simply doesn't exit.
At that point, I think we'll just start eating lunch meat sandwiches. I keep a very tidy drawer for the Ziploc bags.
Contact Dana King at dking@shawmedia.com
