W&P's Silicone and Glass Food Storage Containers Helped Me Completely Declutter My Refrigerator

A sense of calm washes over me when I open the refrigerator.

Elisabeth Sherman is a writer, editor, and fact-checker in the food, culture, and entertainment spaces. She has been working professionally at national magazines since 2015.

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Food & Wine / W&P

My family is wild about fruit and vegetables. Multiple times every week, I find myself back at the grocery store, buying more produce. Blueberries, raspberries, kiwis, bundles of bananas, netted bags of clementines — not to mention multiple cucumbers and beefsteak tomatoes. Our refrigerator quickly became a cluttered mess of flimsy plastic bags and storage containers. Attempting to navigate the refrigerator became a high stakes game of Tetris that always ended in frustration, so I decided to make a change.

I replaced all of the plastic in our home with W&P silicone and glass storage containers. Not only did these containers completely transform how my refrigerator looks but they finally put an end to the constant aggravation I endured every time I opened it up. And while you might balk at some of these prices at first, I think of each one as a worthy investment. They can finally banish expensive-to-replace single-use storage from your kitchen, and more efficiently use limited refrigerator space.

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I started out with these silicone stand up bags because in the past, I would either keep the original plastic packaging or store blueberries and raspberries in Rubbermaid containers. That just wasn’t working — both are so difficult to stack on squat refrigerator shelves because they’re made from rigid material (although to be honest, I still use and love Rubbermaid FreshWorks produce savers which are also incredibly effective at preventing big items, like tomatoes and salad greens, from spoiling).

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The silicone stand up bags are the best alternative because they are made from soft, flexible material. This means you can line up multiple bags in a neat row right at the front of the shelf, and I always have what I want immediately within reach. I use them for anything I would have stored in a plastic container or baggie, whether it's half a cucumber, or a block of parmesan or cream cheese. The difference isn’t just that these look nicer (although they do). They also maximize the shelf space in your refrigerator, drastically reducing clutter.

The stand up bags worked so well, that I decided to toss all the single-use storage bags in my house, and replace them with these roll tight bags. They stand up and stay in place on the shelf, and hook closed with a flexible plastic latch. I found them far superior and more intuitive than zipper lock plastic bags — which if you’ve ever used them you know tend to be trickier to reseal than they look.

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Plus, they are made from thick, durable silicone that just needs to be rinsed out before it can be used again. I’ve stored raspberries in them, which produce a bright red juice that stains everything — but it doesn't stain these bags. And they eliminated the need to keep buying cardboard boxes of plastic baggies, which used to sit in a jumbled pile in one of my kitchen drawers. I was so relieved to get rid of those things, which were always such a pain to sort through.

I was having so much fun redecorating my refrigerator that I decided to try the seal tight glass bowlsas well. These are hard-sided, and I frankly prefer more pliable silicone. I sometimes dump berries, steamed peas, and cherry tomatoes in them. They have a more sleek look, adding to that overall neat and tidy appearance that I want in my refrigerator. Plus they are more compact than the typical square plastic storage container, and the lids are airtight.

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By now, I owned so many W&P storage containers that I rarely ran out of places to store produce and leftovers. But in a pinch, another surprisingly practical tool I discovered are the reusable stretch lids, which are akin to having a lid for every single bowl in your house, regardless of the size or shape. They can even stretch directly over round fruits like halved watermelon and oranges to help them stay fresh longer. I particularly enjoy using them for saving canned black beans and chickpeas. This way, I don’t have to dump the leftovers into another container, which cuts down on the number of dishes I have to do later.

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My word of warning about these lids is that they do take some effort to stretch over bowls and other containers, and it takes a few tries to actually get them to stay in place. Also they don’t work on plates at all, which is disappointing. But overall, I like having a lid that I can throw directly onto my salad bowl when I don’t have time to finish lunch without needing to dig around for a separate container for it.

I let my refrigerator get out of control. But now, those days are, thankfully, far behind me. If this sounds like your current situation, join me in the land of silicone storage. It’s so much tidier here.

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