THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 31, 1997 TAG: 9701300172
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OVER EASY
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: 66 lines
If this is winter it must be time to containerize. Or at least that's what a lady I once took a class from told me. The class was called ``Clutter Control'' and I was not her star pupil. If she had graded on a bell curve, I would have been the clapper.
Anyway, she had a one word answer to all clutter problems.
``CONTAINERIZE!!!'' she told us repeatedly.
I decided that the best time to gather up all my clutter and shove it into little boxes was on a rainy day, especially one during which the temperature hovered between 35 and whatever it is that gives true meaning to those signs that say ``bridges ice before roads.''
Several years ago I took advantage of a day like that to load all my back issues of important magazines into library cases. Once containerized, they filled half the room over my garage.
A couple of years later I questioned my need for a complete set of Family Circle from 1972, so I emptied the cases and recycled the magazines. Only then did I discover that empty containers take up as much room as full ones do.
One year after the magazine incident, I made repeated trips to the neighborhood dollar store and bought the proper containers, then packed up all of clutter from my sewing room into enough clear plastic shoe boxes to make Imelda Marcos drool with envy.
The result was a solid wall of neatly aligned boxes filled with junk. But, since plastic shoe boxes, like library slip cases, take up as much room empty as full, I've just left everything there. I figure so long as nothing is growing, oozing or self-igniting it's not a problem.
Which is not the case with the container job I did in my pantry the year following the shoe box project.
Throughout a cold, drizzly, sometimes icy January I trudged back and forth to the shopping center, exchanging dozens of dollar bills for clear plastic containers (round ones this time) with color-coded tops. Spices would go in the yellow-topped containers, dried fruit in the pink and grains in the turquoise. I figured no further labeling would be needed. After all, I reasoned, anyone can tell cumin from curry powder, raisins from figs, rice from pasta.
My reasoning, as usual, was flawed.
The first problem arose when I was faced with what to do with dried buttermilk powder. It didn't fit any of the categories I had set up. Yellow would have been a logical color for something called buttermilk, but I'd already used it for spices. The only option the dollar store had left was international orange. I bought half a dozen and set up a category I called GOK (as in God only knows).
The second problem took a while to develop, but was lot more serious.
Do you know how little difference there is, after a couple of years, in the scent of cumin and the scent of curry powder? Do you know how much 2-year-old dried out raisins resemble 2-year-old dried out figs? Do you know how hard it is to tell rice-shaped pasta from Uncle Ben's, or Uncle Ben's from Minute Rice even when they're brand new?
Do you know how obvious those differences become once the stuff is put on the table?
The raisin cookies made with fig pieces weren't too bad and the curried bean burritos were, shall we say, interesting. But the rice pudding made with orzo - that's the stuff that looks like rice but tastes like pasta - was a decided yuck.
Oh, and about that growing, oozing and self-igniting bit? The fruit flies and wheat weevils are growing nicely, thank you. The unidentifiable contents of several canisters are oozing menacingly down the sides and I'm asking myself the $64 question. Can spontaneous combustion be far behind?