She’s a relatively young 85 (she was very young for her age at 75, but she’s lost a step of late).
And I will say this – the containers are a perfect size for something like a serving of jello. And I know that there’s no logical reason not to use them – I mean, I know they’ve been completely, utterly, thoroughly washed of every molecule that was once cat foot. Still…c’mon mom…
No, but my ex-MIL used to reuse teabags. Make a cup of tea, sit the bag on a plate on the bench… several hours later make another cup of tea with the same teabag. Fine for her, she liked weak tea. I don’t, but that’s how she’d make it for me too.
-shudder-
But they don’t have lids! Why reuse something that you are going to have to waste foil or plastic wrap to cover?
You need to tell Mom that they can’t save the planet by recycling if old plasticware isn’t reintroduced to the recycling stream, and that if she keeps hoarding the catfood containers and not returning them to the stream, each time she buys catfood she will be forcing the catfood company to use resources to make new plastic!
Last time my mom went into the nursing home for a short stay, I reduced the size of her used ZipLoc bag stash by 50%. I’ve warned her that the neighbors will know when she passes because all those white margarine tubs from 1972 will be out in the recycling bin! In fact, I recycled all the old Gladware-type boxes she saves from all that lunchmeat because I was fed up with trying to match up lids. Anything that had a lid went up to church for the leftover-box-drawer, the rest went to the curb, and I pared it all down to one brand of storage container that has lids that nest together so there is less scatter effect. Now I don’t have to sort through at least three lids each time I try to cover something, everything stacks better and my stress level has dropped.
Wasn’t it you who had to go to war over a ham in the fridge?
I don’t think that’s as unusual as you think it is, but I concur with your shudder.
soap and water cleans food off containers of cat food as well as human food. if you don’t wash either well you could have health problems.
What’s funny is that animal agriculture itself isn’t environmentally correct. Not eating chicken at all is WAY better for the environment than carefully using every part of the chicken.
Storing dryer lint with flint & steel for the kids Boyscout pack, I can see.
But old catfood cups for human food storeage? Ick. Besides, no matter home much she scrubbed, oils could have leached into the plastic only to later leach out into whatever your eating. But only you will ever know if it was tuna, shrimp, or ocean whitefish.
Look on the bright side: I’ve checked that link and there’s No Way it was lamb… 
Why waste money BUYING pillows when you can just make your own, feather by feather 
As for the dishwashing thing, it was an issue because she was an old Polish lady who cooked either Polish food or the sort of stuff *The Gallery of Regrettable Food *is filled with: starchy, greasy, creamy heavy stuff so that everything was coated with a film of grease and meat detritus and starch and god only knows what else. On holidays my mother and aunts would get people to distract her while they basically went through and scoured the living hell out of every dish and glass and piece of silverware.
You beef lovers are so sure of yourselves.
I don’t think that was me, though I could be wrong about that.
This is incredibly disgusting. Bleugh! Hal, tell your mom if she throws out the cat food containers you will buy her jello-sized tupperware of her very own to keep forever and ever.
I have, as a matter of fact, washed paper plates, that is the sturdy plasticized ones. Why not? They’ve only been used once, (assuming there’s no grease or sauce to soak in) - I don’t soak them in the sink, I wipe them off with a damp sponge, dry with a dishcloth, and use them again. I’ll re-use a square of saran wrap if it held a slice of bread or a dry cookie, and I’ve been known to wash and reuse lightly used ziplock bags.
I have Tupperware, but also those deli meat containers and the clear plastic round containers with lids, the kind you buy olives from the grocery olive bar in. Use them as needed a few times, then into the recycling bin, there are alway more to come.
And I cook a big batch of rice and keep it in the refrigerator ALL WEEK. I have never actually seen any go bad, but we use it up in 6 or 7 days.
Man, I was so sure! At any rate, perfect example. And EW. (I still think about it and chuckle because it reminds me of my granny.)
The phrase “dog-chewed ham” still gives me a horrible shivery feeling when I think about it. That thread is a classic.
I really don’t think this is true. I remember looking into it in relation to PET bottles and the actual scientific consensus after you waded through all the new age “nasty chemicals” crap was that to the extent leaching occurred at all from PET, it was a factor of time in bottle. In other words, you will get more leached chemicals from food or drink that was originally in the container (which will have been in there for, potentially, months) than from food or drink that is in there for a day or two while you use it at home.
Not only that but I think most disposable food containers are I think made from HDPE rather than PET, and the former is regarded as even safer than PET.
There’s a really sick joke about a “repurposed” plastic slim jim carrier in here somewhere.
My MIL does this too but she doesn’t make any for me. Every time I find a tea bag out on the counter I throw it out in my home.
My husband had surgery on his hand and after being in that hand cast for several weeks it was removed and he threw it out. Well MIL picked it out of the trash and pointed out to me the wasteful DIL that it was a perfectly good hand sling. But I told her that her son threw it out and then she confronted him. It was bizarre for the both of us even after he told her it was gross, he bled in it and his hand was oozing and he didnt think she should keep it she ended up taking it home.
Snip:
This is a profound statement, and somewhat quite true.
Well said.
Ha, it is FAR weirder than I remembered! All sorts of threadshitting, and then I had completely forgotten that I replied to it! (And I still feel that Hamlet is by far the best name for sentient ham.)