Too Little to keep, too much to throw out, so the happy housewife eats it, and that makes her stout!

I was going to introduce my husband in this my third blog post.  Most of my readers know him already, but I have changed my mind, as I reserve the right to do, and will instead talk a little bit more about us, the "Baby Boomers" instead.
That is what I have been blogging about, my goal in starting this blog was to talk myself through a challenging  transition of becoming a "retired" baby boomer.  My husband, is not a 'boomer', he is just one year shy of our social trend. 

I am an Avon Representative, I have enjoyed the role of "small business" woman for a long time.  I have not only been in Avon for 15 years, but I have been a Home Interiors Decorator,  and a Tupperware Dealer in my efforts to be able to have an outside job, and still be home when the girls got home from school, make dinner and as they say.."bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never, ever let you forget your a man, 'cause I'm a Woman...W O M A N"...huh! Yes, well, enough of that!

As I was saying, I have tried many different forms of work in an effort to please almost everyone in my family;  my Dad, whose philosophy was 'a woman shouldn't work at all outside the home, ever', my Mother, who found the direct sales way of life interesting and rewarding and who also recruited me into the home interiors and Tupperware companies, my children, of course, and my husband.  I had a home business because I was trying to help with  income taxes and because I was told by well meaning others, that if I were to work and make real money, I would only be placing my husband into a higher income bracket and therefore would make him pay more in taxes.

In my experience with Tupperware Products we were told, "Tupperware seals in the freshness",  2 weeks longer than any other product at the time, which was like, foil over a bowl in the refrigerator, or at best a lid that went over the proctor silex bowl, or the corning ware bowl, what did we ever do without Tupperware!  So we thought, and many people still do, that Tupperware was the end all, solve all to our food spoiling problems.

There was the cereal keeper, the lettuce keeper, sandwich keepers, bread keepers, square storers, round storers, oh, and let's not forget the square/rounds,  butter keepers, cheese keepers, etc. etc. ad infinitem...  My favorite was the pickle keeper/server.  It stored and kept the pickles crisp while providing a way to pull the pickles out of the pickle juice so you could remove them to put in your salads, or to eat all by themselves.

Then there were the serving pieces.  My husband remarked recently while we were having dinner with one of our daughters, that he was so used to having plastic  serving bowls, he didn't know how to use glass ones.  We had so many serving pieces, the Cake Taker, the pie Taker, the beautiful colors in the Wonderlier Bowls with the snap on lids that matched and the Servelier Bowls, with matching lids.

Then speaking of the lids or seals, there was a seal for every bowl and every bowl was stamped with a specific letter in the alphabet which coincided with the seal.  The cereal bowl was stamped with a big C and the cereal bowl seal was stamped with a corresponding C.  Or the small storage bowl was stamped with a S and the seal was also stamped with a S, etc. Don't forget about the "burp", the seal 'burped' out the air to seal in the freshness!  I had to explain the Tupperware conundrum to my husband just this week.  We were emptying the dishwasher, a chore which he has started helping with now that he is retired.

The old Tupperware circa 1975, I explained, wasn't Microwave safe, nor dishwasher safe.  However, the new Tupperware is stamped on the bottom with icons stating whether they are dishwasher safe, or microwave safe.  You must know these things, and you would if you had been using Tupperware for over 35 years!  If you 'nuke' Tupperware it will cause it to bubble and then it isn't guaranteed.  It came with a lifetime guarantee!  If you washed it in the dishwasher it would warp.  I must confess, I put mine in the dishwasher on the top rack for a long time, but I didn't 'nuke' it because it melted or bubbled in the microwave.

We swallowed the sales pitch hook line and sinker, that food stored in Tupperware would keep fresh for a loooooong time, to the detriment of our health, perhaps.  That food that has been in the refrigerator for two weeks sometimes looks like something that has started growing in there and who knows if it will multiply once opened and leap out of that cereal bowl, or storage bowl, or wonderlier bowl! 

We sold tons of Tupperware!  The parties, ah the parties, you carried  this suitcase full of Tupperware products and a table cloth and set the stuff up in your hostesses home.  Then you had hostess gifts, games, prizes, and gifts for each guest.  Those prizes, some of them were worth more than the party and the Tupperware itself.  Like the little bitty tiny bowls with seals, or the towel or recipe hangers, or the orange peeler so many cool prizes.

Then if you were a top sales Dealer, you received lots of incentive gifts.  You'd be awarded with lots of Tupperware, cookware, and if you were really great, you recruited and became manager and then you got a car, a Ford Station Wagon.  The one my mom got was blue.  She sure was proud of that car.

phenomena in America.  The fact that Tupperware, their products and all things plastic, was produced from oil and oil byproducts.  My husband worked for and retired from a company whose main purpose was to take the gas from the oil, compress it and send it down the line to be used by consumers like you and me.  

So Thank you Tupperware for using the oil and byproducts, because in a way Tupperware kept my husband and thousands, maybe millions of other people. employed through the years.

Thanks for listening, ya'll come back now,
A.