Posted on by Phil Strawn

Tupperware and Anxiety: A Personal Story About Fear of Food Storage Containers


Not my mother, but the Tupperware and the fridge look about right. Ain’t AI fun!

It takes guts to admit to a phobia. I have more than one, but this one will do for now. I can’t stand to touch plastic ware, mainly Tupperware or any brand that resembles that sturdy piece of American culture from the 1950s.

My mother, rest her sainted soul and bless her heart, was a Tupperware lady. During those years, she hosted numerous parties in our and her friends’ homes.

It wasn’t until years later I learned the truth about these parties. They were a front for gossip and cocktails. In her old age, she admitted it was a sham, and the girls used it as a front to get away from us kids and husbands for a few hours and get sloshed on Manhattans and Gin and Tonics. It was the perfect set-up. She made a small amount of money, had some good hi-balls, and caught up on the neighborhood gossip. They were the forerunner to ” girls night out,” which started in the 90s. I sometimes wandered into the room hoping to find a little finger sandwich or a Vienna sausage on a toothpick. Instead, I found a pack of “big-haired” gals holding a cocktail glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother was a world champion smoker and would have a ciggie in hand and one perched in her ashtray. Mothers back then were tough gals.

Our kitchen was stuffed to the point of bursting with the plastic-ware. It filled every drawer and cabinet and was neatly stacked to the ceiling on top of the ice-box. We ate on paper plates and drank from aluminum glasses. There was no room for real dishes or glassware; It was all Tupperware everywhere. The ice box was neatly arranged, with meals sealed in Tupperware. We didn’t call them “leftovers” in our home; they were called “future pre-prepared dinners.” Some of those dinners were on-call for a year or more. That’s the beauty of Tupperware: if properly sealed per the manufacturer’s instructions, the food will last for years.

Now, the explanation of the phobia. It’s complex and involves many layers of childhood anxiety. My therapist said it started with an incident when I was five years old. I don’t remember what I did, but it was severe enough for a butt-whooping from my mother. While trying to escape, she grabbed one arm, a classic move that only mothers use, and wielded the nearest object she could find, which was an 8×10 Tupperware slimline cake storage container. I had no idea plastic ware could hurt so damn much. The impression of the insignia on the bottom of the container lingered on my butt for days. Of course, I showed it to all my buddies, and they were pretty impressed and worried because their mothers owned the same Tupperware containers.

After that incident, I couldn’t bring myself to touch plastic ware in any form. That brought more punishment because when helping with the dishes, I would retreat from the kitchen sink when a dirty piece of Tupperware was to be washed. There was nothing that could make me touch that vile object. That plastic dish scared me as much as the monster under my bed. My father realized that his only son was becoming a child neurotic and stepped in to help my mother with the dishes, thus allowing me to enjoy a somewhat normal childhood.

Not much has changed in 65 years; I can’t touch the stuff. My wife, Momo, loves her some Tupperware. She has a beautiful assortment of colored containers that, when soiled, she puts in the dishwasher. That is another layer of my anxiety. I cannot take them from the rack. I use a set of tongues to grab the cursed piece and then lay it on the counter for her to put away. I don’t care to know where she hides this stuff as long as I don’t come into contact with it.

My therapist is a cheeky fellow. He told me that being spanked with a Tupperware dish and all the problems it caused me could have been worse. My mother could have grabbed a PYREX dish.

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21 Replies to “Tupperware and Anxiety: A Personal Story About Fear of Food Storage Containers”

    1. Haha! I Enjoyed this😄 I don’t like Tupperware either; maybe because it’s made of plastic. One Halloween I took a blue Tupperware top, melted it in the stove, and made a blue diamond mold. It was the perfect jewel for Wes’ Treasure Troll Halloween costume, and he won the costume contest. The smell of burning plastic never left that apartment.

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  2. Tupperware gets stinky as it ages-it kind of like a musty muskrat smell as if something died in it. The lid warps and the plastic gets cloudy and hard. Maybe Tupperware was the forerunner of the rubber/plastic garbage cans that replaced the shiny metal ones with the rusted out bottoms. If you had to eat food out of Tupperware, that would definitely stoke your fear of them-and garbage cans.

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    1. The stuff Momo uses is made in China, not the US like the old Tupperware. My sister uses some of my mothers Tupperware she inherited. Mom was specific on who got the stuff when she passed on.

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  4. Laughing so early in the morning. It is still dark outside so this Tupperware business is extra scary.
    In early October, Dodie decided we would trash all of our plastic. Now we use jars, ceramic containers, etc.

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  5. I have a phobia about it because my mom saved all of it, tops or not, as well as plastic bags, bread bags. She washed it all out and hung it over all the canisters or whatever she could find. We had a dishwasher for the plastic ware, but she saved everything. And it took up all this SPACE! I keep it for a while when I get it from someone, then pitch it eventually. Hate that stuff. (I DO have some nice tall round ones I freeze stock in, though.

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    1. It may have been a generation thing. They grew up in the depression so everything was scarce. Sort of like Squirrels burying acorns. My aunt did the same crazy stuff. Not me, I rarely eat leftover food.

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      1. I don’t each many leftovers either. Pizza and pasta are all I do, and soup occasionally. However, I AM sort of a prepper. Keep some dried and canned goods around. Frozen meat. Water, batteries, radio, ha….

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  6. Yeah, we actually have a propane pig because when my dad was alive he needed oxygen. So we had a generator that ran on propane. But we still keep it. Ha. Camp stoves, stuff like that. I’m not a MAJOR prepper, but I have some stuff. We have a wood stove and wood. So we could make it. And one little pantry in the basement that would maybe work if the nuclear drift comes our way. It would need work to be big time. A few guns. I just found my dad’s antique Colt revolver in the bottom of a drawer in here. Cool gun. 🙂

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    1. We are not as prepared as we could be, some food and water and a couple of guns. If it comes down to that, I don’t believe many of us would survive he onslaught against us. We live in dangerous times. There is a new movie out called “Homestead,” and it’s about that very scenario. It scared Momo.

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  7. Well, I really think we are probably in one of the best places up off the grid in the UP to survive. We’d head up there with our trailer. Solar panels propane, 35 acres, fising stream, couple freezers. Few people but people who know how to survive and I doubt anyone would head there. Texas probably not quite as good. Probably a few remote places out west. Homestead, huh. Hmmm. You are likely right, though.

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  8. Now that is a great read. I remember those tupperware bowls and lids…they contained mystery food…my sister and I would go through them all because none were labeled of course.

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    1. Mystery food! Gotta love that one. You are right, my mother is the only one who knew what was in them. I would wander into the kitchen around mid-day and see the Tupperware container sitting out, and I knew we were getting the second time around treat. No microwave, everything had to be heated in the oven or stovetop, and it was pretty tasty, and the waves didn’t affect our brains.

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      1. I won’t warm up soup in the Microwave now….I put it on the stove because it just tastes better…you are right….it’s much better in or on an oven.

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      2. I detest our little microwave. It beeps too loud, the door slams to loud and the buttons are not lighted..cheap junk, and I’m probably frying my brain when I heat my milk for my nightly Ovaltine.

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