Help settle an annoyance: Can potato chip/crisp bags be stored on the kitchen counter?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mom, being a mom, sometimes visits and she likes to fuss over little things.
The most recent fuss is where I keep my potato chips (bagged, uneaten, for whenever I want a snack). I keep them on a kitchen counter. To me, in my opinion, they’re fine on the kitchen counter. Am I weird for keeping them on the kitchen counter?

Her, she wants to put them away in the cupboards. She’s always doing this, nay insisting on it. She says it’s “not normal” to have the chip bag on the counter and that she thinks most people would put them away in cupboards.

So my question is this: Is it weird to keep the bags piled neatly on a kitchen counter, say, in a corner? Do you read me doing that and go :dubious:?
While I wasn’t thinking this was normal behavior or that “everyone does it”, I like to think I’m not the only one who does it…

What say you? Weird or not?
And, as a side question, where do you usually keep potato chips?

2

Open chip bags go on the counter, so you don’t forget you have them. If you put the bag in the cupboard, you forget and they go stale. Very wasteful. Unopened bags reside in the pantry until needed.

3

This.

But it’s your mom. And she loves you. So put the chips in the cupboard before she visits. :smiley:

4

Unopened bags go in the pantry. Opened bags get eaten.

5

Your house, your rules; tell your mom you love her and then politely remind her of that. “What most people do” ought not dictate how you live your life.

I happen to like having an uncluttered countertop area in which to prepare meals, but there’s a counter on the far side of our kitchen where we keep plenty of food/snack items out in the open. Potato chips don’t happen to be among them - we keep those in a pantry - but then, it’s our house, our rules.

6

I’m a put-things-away person so mine go in the cupboard. However, I would never bug anyone who likes to put theirs on the counter about it.

7

As far as “normal” goes I think it would depend on the amount of counter space available, but really it’s your house your rules.

If your mom comes over a lot - I would make that clear. If she lives far away and visits rarely just tidy the counter before she comes.

8

It really doesn’t matter. Having them on the counter looks messier than putting them in a cupboard, but that’s about it.

I keep ours in the pantry. It is impossible to forget about a bag of potato chips.

9

This is why I do not allow my mom to visit me. snicker (but seriously I don’t. I visit her instead)

Most of the places I’ve lived, I’m dealing with very limited cabinet space. I tend to buy snacks as I eat them so I don’t have to store bags of chips (or I just leave them on my computer desk if I don’t finish them). But yes, I would store bags of chips on the countertop and don’t find it weird .

Your mom, like my mom, is probably a control freak and because she no longer has control of you every day like she used to, she’s trying to do what she can with her limited access. Or I could be projecting. But it sounds obnoxious regardless.

10

I try to keep mine out of sight. If you keep them in plain sight, you’ll eat from them more often. This is a problem, for some of us.

11

I pile them on the fridge. But I am lucky that I don’t really like potato chips very much, so I can ignore them for weeks on end, at which point I finally tell me SO “You’re NEVER going to eat these!” and throw them all out.

I would only not put them on the counter because I value every inch of counter space. Now I have a beautiful giant kitchen with two huge counters so it’s not such an issue but it wasn’t that long ago that I had about a square foot of space to work with.

12

Well, yeah, that’s where I keep my bagged, uneaten potato chips too. I don’t usually keep chips around, it’s an occasional treat and when I have a bag in the house it’s because I intend to eat them soon.

The ones I’ve eaten are in my tummy…

13

Wait a minute: you open a bag of chips and then there are still some left when you’re done eating? How the hell does that work? Your mother is right, you’re just odd.

14

I also put them on the fridge, or maybe on the kitchen table. And I also have about a square foot of counter space. No pantry, no room in the cupboards. Someone else’s arbitrary rules are not necessarily going to fit my life.

15

This phrase seems strangely ungrammatical :smiley:

16

In my house, any bags of chips left on a kitchen counter would quickly get chewed open by cats, so they go in the pantry.

But you’re not me. In your house, keep 'em wherever you like. I don’t think you’re weird (…for that reason).

17

I’m with mom. The bags of chips should be put away just like boxes of mac & cheese & breakfast cereal & canned soup and other sorts of prepared foods.

Of course, I don’t care. If there are chips on the counter and I’m around, it won’t be an issue for long.

18

People have all sorts of odd rules for households, and anyone who breaks those rules commit a sort of unforgivable sin. Most of the time those rules are entirely arbitrary.

I once lived with someone who insisted that towels be folded in thirds, not halves. Anyone who was not born with this very obvious knowledge was some sort of cretin.

19

I am very anal retentive about my kitchen counters. The only things that go there are:

  1. The fruit bowl (for fruit that should not be refridgerated)
  2. Knife block.
  3. Phone.
  4. Jug of wooden utensils.

My kitchen is not large and I need to be able to cook in there so everything else goes away. You want to use a small appliance? Take it out of the cupboard, use it and put it away.

So, your chip bags would drive me nuts but only if I had to live there.

(Aside: I have converted many friends and family to my ‘keep your counters clear’ mentality. It makes cooking and cleaning up so much easier.)

20

unsightly odd shaped objects need to go inside of sightly regular shaped objects. use a bread box, not one with bright colors or odd shaped like a tetrahedron either.