Hasta La Ideas

Reader Carla submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

After too many episodes of struggling to find a top to match a Tupperware in my mother’s kitchen I’ve decided to buy her a new set of food storage containers. Can you recommend the best type of food storage containers? The requirements I’d like to fulfil are:

• a few different size containers all with the same interchangeable lids
• stackable
• high quality

I seems to be difficult to find all of these qualities in one product. Do you have any recommendations?

Food storage containers, until recently, were some of the most ridiculously designed items for the kitchen. Additionally, they easily stained, warped, and lost their lids like socks lose their mates in a dryer. Research now shows that some were even made of plastics that leeched chemicals into the food — yummy!

Thankfully, food storage containers have advanced quite a bit in recent years. Today, if I were replacing my food storage containers, I would buy Rubbermaid’s Easy Find Lid Containers. They’re BPA free, the lids all snap together and to the bottoms of the containers so you don’t have a giant mess in the cabinets, and many of the lids can be used for different-size bases. Plus, $11 for 24 pieces won’t be too painful on your pocketbook.

I know that not everyone loves plastic storage, but based on your qualifications it’s pretty much the only option available to you. There aren’t any glass or stainless steel brands right now that have interchangeable lids (at least not that I have found). Also, they’re not usually stackable. If any of our readers know of a brand of glass or stainless steel food storage containers that hasn’t yet made it onto my radar, please share that information in the comments.

Thank you, Carla, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column, and good luck taming the kitchen clutter!

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