Do you really want to spend your one wild and precious life putting marshmallows in jars?
The combined superpowers of social media, Nancy Meyers, and home renovation television have done an amazing job of selling America on a certain type of kitchen. This kitchen is big — big enough for a whole rowdy family — and open, so that you can see everyone in said family at the same time. There’s an island too wide to reach across, and everything from the walls to the appliances is done in tasteful neutral tones. And crucially, this kitchen is organized.
Pastas and grains are displayed in elegant clear containers. Oils and vinegars are decanted into matching bottles (with nothing so gauche as a brand name within sight). Pantries become apothecary shops, with everything ready to be scooped romantically from its matching bin. And it’s making me lose my goddamn mind.
As you know by virtue of not being able to buy yogurt by the handful, most food is sold in containers. But for many people, these containers are not good enough. So they have built a whole online world dedicated to the purpose of showing you what other types of containers to put your groceries in. Which of course requires buying these containers, many of which are plastic, into which you can decant stuff that came in... other plastic containers.
Kate Aronoff recently published a damning exposé in the New Republic about how the plastics industry has known for decades that plastic can’t actually be recycled, but misled the public to protect its own image. “Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment,” Aronoff writes. “Another recent study estimates that just 5 to 6 percent are successfully recycled.” Yet it’s basically impossible to live a life sans plastic, especially when it comes to food. Bread comes in plastic bags, eggs are nestled into plastic cartons, and even apples are studded with little plastic stickers.
The blame here lies with the corporations, not social media stars. But it can be difficult to watch influencers tout sustainability as a motive while transferring granola bars from cardboard boxes to plastic bins. Home food waste is also a massive problem, but presenting hulking plastic cereal dispensers as a miracle cure for stale Kix just makes me picture what they’ll look like in a landfill one day. And even if you’re moving coffee from a big, resealable plastic bin to a glass one, you’ve still bought the plastic, which would have worked perfectly well on its own. The only problem is that it doesn’t look the part.
Influencers’ reasons for spending hours “decanting” groceries, as the practice is often called, range from the entirely practical to the patently ridiculous. On the practical side, flour and other grains are famously susceptible to bugs (or just plain old going stale) if they’re not properly sealed. Lentils and beans often come in flimsy, nonresealable plastic bags that make them prone to skittering all over your cabinets. And if you shop in a place that sells ingredients in bulk, bringing your own containers, especially glass jars previously used for other groceries, usually allows you to save money.
But a survey of TikTok reveals a number of justifications that don’t stand up to any real scrutiny. A few people argue that decanting spices from their original jars to other jars lets you see how much you have left, but this ignores the fact that most spices already come in clear glass or plastic containers. Keeping bugs out and ensuring “less food waste” makes sense for flour, but much less for individual packets of fruit snacks or chips. For a big bag of chips, I want to yell, “Just get a chip clip!” And how is decanting juice into plastic pitchers saving any room in your refrigerator?
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Ensuring that each can in your fridge is fitted into a plastic can dispenser next to your orchid and jar of four carrots is not an exercise in sustainable living or efficient design. The real goal of all of this extra work is clear: aesthetics. This is not a secret. Organizing influencers regularly say that making things look pretty is reason enough to do it. And from a zoomed-out view, it’s a fine enough argument. Your home is where you spend most of your time, so of course it should look the way you want. Why shouldn’t you spend your one wild and precious life putting marshmallows in a jar?
But while creating beauty is admirable, most of these influencers are also chasing an aesthetic defined by wealth and bounty. Home renovation television is built to sell you products endorsed by its hosts. Nancy Meyers writes fantasies. The Kardashians, whose impeccably organized pantries have been the source of much envy and analysis, do not need to worry about losing money to crackers gone stale. They have the capital to do things purely because of how they look. In this case, form triumphs handily over function.
Or more realistically, the Kardashians of the world have the capital to ask their staff to do things. These massive, white, neat kitchens look like no one has ever set foot in them, because the people who own them have assistants and housekeepers to do all the cleaning and decanting for them. This sets an aspirational visual standard, though, that suggests if you want to appear rich, or like a good wife, or a good mother, your kitchen must match, even if you’re just one woman (it’s usually women these messages are directed toward). Not only is it form over function, it’s labor over function — extra work with often no practical benefit, and with considerable waste.
People tend to forget the “reduce” and “reuse” parts of the famous eco-conscious slogan, but some influencers are trying to remind people that having an organized, efficient, and, yes, beautiful kitchen doesn’t require buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of clear plastic bins. Many favor glass containers, especially upcycled ones — a glass Ragú jar holds beans just as well as a glass jar from Etsy. If labels are an eyesore, you can just wash them off the bottles and tubs your groceries were sold in. Bag sealers allow you to keep cereal and chips in their original bags, and save space, too. Your kitchen might not look exactly like the impeccably designed examples on TV and TikTok. But maybe there are more noble goals to chase.
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