You probably have hundreds of them, and let's be honest, half of them belong to other people. I'm guilty of taking home dessert from my Mom's house and never returning her Glad food storage containers. Perfect for everything, from keeping leftovers, to meal prepping, and potlucks. These plastic containers don't just live in the kitchen, but around the house, too. Just when you think you've wrung every single use out of your Glad food containers, along comes a viral Facebook post. This time, you're not going to believe the Glad container hack that has everyone talking.
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Glad Food Storage Containers For Your To-Go Lunch
That's right. Get ready. As Sarah Rose wrote on Facebook,
"UM. HOW AM I JUST NOW finding out that the circle on these lids are actually lids for the tiny containers?!
? someone please tell me I'm not the only one who didn't know this"
Did you know that these Glad lids were made to hold the tiny cups, made for things like guacamole, salad dressing, or hummus on-the-go? These life hacks are indispensable, especially to those who pack multiple lunches each morning or are serious about weekly meal prep. Never worry about keeping those stackable lids organized again with this clever way of always using the tiny containers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ZklzuJSeRq/?tagged=gladcontainers
Just when you think you've lost all of the tiny lids around, Glad swoops in with this quiet little hack that means you never have to sacrifice a soggy salad by the time lunch rolls around. You'll feel like Martha Stewart screwing in your tiny container into the interlocking lid. This is exciting news, because I'm someone who can't eat pizza without ranch, and now I have an excuse to bring leftover pizza for lunch. I'm not going to lie, I attempted ranch in a Ziploc bag before and the clean up was awful. Thanks to the tight seal, I feel confident about packing ranch in my to-go lunch.
Glad containers sure beat any kind of food storage. I don't even like using sandwich bags or plastic wrap. My sandwich always ends up squished. Glad variety packs come in handy for those sandwich days, and for when you have a larger entrée.
While it's not hard to find seriously great life hacks on Pinterest for storage ideas for your square containers other than using your trusty kitchen drawer, sometimes we need some help decoding what the plastic containers are even trying to tell us at all. Luckily, we've decoded it for you.
Explaining the Symbols
So now that we've covered that, how do you know what all the text on the Tupperware containers mean? No matter what brand you buy, whether you're a hardcore Glad fan, Rubbermaid fan, or a fan of the generic plastic containers from the dollar store, every plastic item will have some sort of symbol on the bottom of it. So what do they all mean?
Food Safe
When you see an image with a fork and a cup on the container, this is how you know it's food safe. Because you wouldn't want to use something that wasn't food safe for food, right?
Microwave Safe
If you see a microwave, it indicates that the container is microwave safe. The image will always have squiggly lines on it to signal radiation waves, but you could probably figure out what this meant.
Freezer Safe
If you see a snowflake or two, rest assured that this container is safe to store in the freezer for the long haul of meal prepping and reheating.
Dishwasher Safe
You'll typically see this design represented, in some way, as dishes being sprayed with water. It can take the form of the dishwasher image, which will be a square and isn't to be confused with the rectangle shape of the microwave icon.
Recycling Symbols
Sometimes that deep dish pizza just puts way too many grease stains in my food containers, so I like to replace them. Straight from the Tupperware website, this handy chart is perfect for determining how to recycle your plastic containers when they've fulfilled their duty in your kitchen cabinets.
While these food containers are useful for many things, and BPA free, Glad food containers are not for boiling or for using on hot stove tops.
