Who Said Life Is Not Objects

One thing I love to do is put things into containers.  I buy various food items and then decant them into oddly shaped jars and tins in my cupboard.  Bulk bins provide a handy excuse for this behavior, but I do it with prepackaged foods too, like the dried cranberries I get from Trader Joe's, which are sold in a convenient re-sealable pouch.

If I had to take a Freudian stab at my motivation for this jarring activity, I would take two stabs.  The first is that I am concerned about disposable plastics, and keeping my food in jars smoothes a band-aid over the reality that my country uses 12 million barrels of oil per year to make plastic grocery bags alone.  My big American footprint feels more petite, even if it isn't.

My second theory is that keeping healthy food in glass containers gives it an edge over the flashy packaging of junk foods.  It becomes a precious commodity.  And I feel witchy, close to the earth in a way that is cool and not hippy-ish.  Surrounded by motley jars of spices and grains that only I can identify.  This is my tiny interior world.