Posted at Mar 25/2006 04:22PM:
Sebastian De Vivo: Stefan, it was great to see what is in essence an archaeological method of investigation applied to the contents of your mom's infamous tupperware drawer. You lay out your principal question at the outset, and provide a clear progession through your investigation. The network analysis was great, and your conclusion -- in this case that the practical utility of tupperware often far outweighs its ideological significance -- is a solid one. The navigation was a bit unclear at first, but is clearly very intuitive once you begin. You brought in issues from the class as well as from other sources (you actually remember what your math teacher said?!). Great job!
Abstract
My mom has a huge drawer filled with Tupperware in our kitchen. Not just brand name Tupperware, but a wide assortment of plastic containers: sets bought from Costco, almost matching sets from Target, and a few assorted others. There are round containers, square containers, and containers of all shapes, sorts, and sizes. She has a veritable arsenal of them: one for every possible task. Now my mom may just be particularly obsessive about organization (her collection of containers extends beyond this drawer to a large number of bags, bins, and boxes), but I always wondered why she had so many of these plastic containers. Could she possibly use them all? At some point, wasn’t this level of organization counterproductive, becoming time consuming rather than time saving? Also, I wondered why so many different types of containers were required. Was the job of containing slices of pear that much different than packaging last night’s leftover dinner?
Ultimately, these questions boil down into one line of inquiry: What does having such a large, diverse collection of plastic containers do? What work is done by having many different containers, and how is this different than the work done by a smaller collection of Tupperware? This project is an attempt to finally understand why my mom has all those containers.
Back to: Ten Things 2006: Projects
EXTRAS AND ASIDES:
Author: Stefan Vraspir
Sidebar: Stefan Vraspir - brainstorming
Site/project history: Previous version
More information on Tupperware: Additional reading
Posted at Feb 21/2006 11:37AM:
[klfsong]: You might want to consider what it means now to have tupperware or to like it. It tends to have a rather negative connotation. Why?
Posted at Feb 21/2006 08:25PM:
Arielle Lasky: what about our obsession with neatness? also -- I think there were tupperware parties.
Posted at Feb 22/2006 01:34PM:
[Amara]: Stefan, I like that you are going to compare your mother and father's organizational skills/use of containers. This could be interesting.
Posted at Feb 27/2006 06:57PM:
[Kareem]: I love this topic, and the gender issue Amara mentioned. I think it would be pretty interesting to talk also about alternatives to tupperware. My family never uses tupperware, for instance. We do things another way (plates and plastic-wrap).
Posted at Mar 02/2006 07:26PM:
chris witmore: Hi Stefan. Have you come across Alison Clarke's work with tupperware? Clarke is a design historian who wrote
Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America 1999.
Posted at Mar 05/2006 03:06PM:
Stefan Vraspir: Chris: I have seen Clarke's book quoted in a number of places (i actually have the citation saved). i'm pretty sure we have it in the library, but i haven't taken a look at it yet. thanks!
Posted at Mar 08/2006 10:55PM:
[Amara]: Stefan, your Mom's Tupperware sounds so interesting! It might be too much, but have you ever seen those plastic lid covers you can use if you loser the lid to one of those precious containers?
Posted at Mar 09/2006 06:06PM:
Brian Nguyen: On the note of losing a lid to a tupperware container, i'm always pissed at myself for losing a lid because none of my tupperware comes from the same company. As a result not all the lids match the containers and it becomes quite a hassle. Glad is different from Ziploc tupperware containers, etc. Why not create a standard? standard sandwich size, standard round, etc. Are companies trying to create customer loyalty w/ one specific size for their own brand? I dunno.
