Years ago, a few of us were in my sister’s kitchen helping her clear the dishes and pack up the leftovers after a big family meal. When Grandma Dorothy reached for the Ziploc bags, hysterical laughter broke out. Maybe we all had a sugar high of sorts from the bevy of amazing desserts, but the conversation centered around what should go where and what containers we should use. Everybody had an opinion.
The goal was to keep the integrity of the food intact, and not to combine things that obviously didn’t go together. My sister’s pantry is stocked better than aisle three of my City grocery store so the options were literally limitless, but this task sounded fairly simple. The choices were to move the food into separate plastic bags, Tupperware, or glass containers, OR to leave them in their current serving dishes and cover them with Saran Wrap or with aluminum foil. Sub Zero blueprints were involved to play this game of Foodie Tetris, making sure everything would fit back in the well-stocked fridge.
Then there were the sidebar conversations of, “If nobody’s going to eat that tomorrow, let’s throw it out.” And, “Do you want to take some of this home? It’s your favorite!”
And then the thought struck me about the inventor of “snack-sized bags” vs. “sandwich bags” and I decided to share this with the already giggly kitchen contingency. Did the executive team at S.C. Johnson sit around one day at an offsite meeting to experiment with how many pretzels should or could fit into a plastic bag? Did they have a conference call with Pepperidge Farm’s bakery department to confirm the height of an actual sandwich? (I bet those smart peeps didn’t even have to look up that data cause Pepperidge Farm remembers!) Who weighed in on the circumference of a medium apple?
I’m actually surprised that they never invented compartmentalized lunch bags with a side for chips and a side for the sammy. But I’m not up on Ziploc strategy so maybe that’s already in the works? (Hey, Ziploc. You hiring?!) The truth is that I don’t really want someone else telling me how big a snack should be. Isn’t that a little personal? I couldn’t help but wonder…If we can customize our own sneakers and create our own calendars or mugs, why can’t we make our own Ziploc bags? (Carrie Bradshaw isn’t the only one who wonders.)
I’m always trimming the tops off of those too big potato chip bags (bullshit that the contents settled during shipping by the way) before I fold down the manageable excess and use a chip clip to seal them, but I’d rather use a customized big snack bag. And living in the City, I’m always paranoid about leaving food out or open, so I’d use a Ziploc for just about…well, everything. Then all of my stuff would be safe and secure, and I would have total containment. (Then maybe I could stop seeing my shrink, return to my regularly scheduled programming, and finally sleep through the night.) Ok, well at least I’d have momentary containment.
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