Mom, The Whole "Reusing" Thing Is Going Too Far

Mom lives in the same town I do, so the family pops by to see her once or twice a week. She’s always been a big “reuser”, and she instilled that in me as well. Why buy Gladware resealable containers when I have a cabinet filled with plastic containers from Chinese restaurants and such? And every time we stop by, she always sends a package of foodstuffs and extras (whether we want them or not).

We stopped by over the weekend, and among the goodies were little orange plastic bowls filled with jello. The bowls are a perfect size for a little treat like that, and she asked that I hang on to it and return then when we’re done. Sure, no problem.

So, I just finished one here at work. And as I finished it, I noticed some writing on the side. “Market Select”. Hmmm…I wonder what kind of containers these are, anyway. A quick googling, and…

goddammit, mom.

Ha! Oh, dear.

Though I will say: it was my understanding that a lot of that type of plastic ware is not meant to be reused-- washed, heated, anything— because it’ll start degrading and putting all kind of nasty chemicals into what ever you’re consuming. I’ll readily accept if I’m wrong, but yeah.

[QUOTE=The Topic Line at the time of this post]
The Who “Reusing” Thing Is Going Too Far
[/QUOTE]

Depends…is she reusing, say Roger or Pete or is it Keith or John? I think the latter may be a bit past their sell-by date by now, but, hey, go ahead and keep Roger (or any of the others) in circulation!

My mother in law has pulled things out of my trash. That really offends me, for whatever reason. I trained my husband out of doing it pretty early on, but there’s realistically not anything I can do about her.

“Who”, “Whole”, what’s the difference.

Ok, slight difference. Passing mod?

Ha! Hal’s gonna forever be known as the “Who Reuser,” because surely nothing else past or present will ever be associated with his handle to compete with this slip!

Knead
Sometimes it’s fun to pretend you’re new even when you ain’t

What do you mean, he asked sheepishly?

That reminds me, I need to pick up some Baa Mix Market Select.

My MIL doesn’t like to throw out anything either. I just had to convince her to throw away 4 day old white rice from the chinese food we had delivered last week. I explained to her that we live in a magical country full of excessive amounts of food at extremely low prices and we didn’t need to figure out how to use dried up old rice in our dinner tonight to keep from starving to death. She threw it out but she was obviously fighting with herself not to dig it back out of the garbage and put it into soup or something later.

Have you ever known anyone that washes out used paper coffee cups? I’ve known a couple.

I don’t even care if this is true or not. I’m going to immediately use this as a rationale for throwing away all of the stupid saved containers we have all over this house. We have drawers full of old takeout containers and butter tubs and whatever. It’s ridiculous and I could really use that space for other things, but MrWhatsit was raised by a Depression-era parent, and well. Yeah.

But it’s a health hazard! To the garbage it goes!

You go, MsWhatsit! Get rid of the stuff!

Fixed. You can also report your own post and ask for an edit.

Bah! Ask not! They’ll just pull the wool over your eyes.

Not to distract from the thread, but day (or four-day) old take-out rice makes awesome fried rice and other dishes. It’s not a leftover thing–you get entirely different results if you start with fresh rice (plus, you don’t have to cook it beforehand).

Been there. Look, (MIL) this is supposed to be a va-effing-cation, I most certainly WILL NOT wash these PAPER PLATES to REUSE THEM.

How the heck do you wash paper plates?

As soon as I read this line I knew exactly what you were talking about.

I used to do that with 7/11 coffee cups, until I discovered that the bottoms fall out after the second microwaving. And I found out the hard way.

A friend’s mum not only washes out plastic bags she carefully sellotapes up any tears.

Your mom is a cougar.