When she was finished, she turned to me and said, “Mom, what do you think?” I was at a loss for words. It was breathtaking! She had organized all of the containers by size and shape, found a place for everything, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I was actually  able to find the right size container. I looked at her in amazement and told her what a fabulous job she did. I hugged and kissed her and told her what a big help she was to her Mommy and how proud I was of her. She left beaming, and I continued to stare at her handiwork and re-affirmed that every bit of my non-medicated labor with my daughter was worth it.

 

That was then. This is now.

 

Last night, we had a number of leftovers from our dinner that needed to be placed in containers. As I walked into the kitchen towards the container cabinet, my heart began to race. My palms began to sweat. What will I find when I open that door? As I opened the cabinet, I was faced with a mountain of containers, lids all over the place, tops without bottoms and vice versa. A far cry from the neat and organized cabinet for which my daughter had worked so hard. I shrugged, bent down to find something that would hold the remains of our meal and vowed never to cook another dinner that resulted in leftovers.

 

What is it about container cabinets? Why, once they are organized, don’t they stay that way? I try to put the containers back in order after they’re used. I tell both my children to do the same. It’s not like I have a lot of them. (Well, I don’t think I do….)

 

Here’s what I think happens. After all of the containers are put in their place in their cabinet, they rebel. It’s not in their nature to be neatly stacked by size and shape. It feels awkward to them to be separated from their lids. And how dare other miscellaneous objects be placed in the same cabinet with them?   They ban together and lid by lid, they rebel. They unstack themselves and move around in the cabinet so that you can’t find them anymore. They kick out intruding water bottles or lunch bags. This is their space and they are claiming it.

 

So, I’ve given up on trying to keep my container cabinet organized and I’ve realized that there’s more of them than there are of me. And sometimes you just have to realize when you’ve been beat. 

 

Anyone else suffering from container rebellion? If so, I’d love to hear how you’ve handled it.