The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Containers for Your Home

Between work, family, and everything else Chicago throws at you, keeping your space organized can feel like a full-time job. Whether you’re meal prepping for the week or just trying to keep leftovers fresh, having the right containers makes all the difference—and saves you precious time.

Why Container Choice Matters

Not all containers are created equal. Using the wrong type for your needs can lead to stains, lingering odors, or even wasted food. Think about it: you wouldn’t use the same container to store dry goods that you’d use to pack a lunch. They serve completely different purposes!

If organizing feels overwhelming, remember that professional home cleaning services can help you establish systems that work.

Lunch Containers: The Parent’s Best Friend

As any parent knows, packing lunches is a daily ritual. Here are the containers that actually make the process easier:

Thermos for Hot Foods

When sandwiches are no longer an option (we’ve all been there), a quality thermos becomes your best friend. The stainless steel interior prevents staining and odor absorption—perfect for tomato-based foods that would permanently stain plastic.

Cleaning tip: Use soapy water and avoid the dishwasher to maintain the seal. If you’re struggling to keep up with daily cleaning, consider fast cleaning services to help maintain your kitchen.

BPA-Free Plastic Bento Boxes

For most school lunches, systematic plastic containers work beautifully. Look for:

• BPA-free materials
• Easy-to-stack designs
• Dividers for different food types
• Dishwasher-safe options

Though they’re dishwasher safe, handwashing helps prevent odor absorption and extends their lifespan. For busy families, sometimes you need someone to clean my apartment to handle the daily maintenance while you focus on what matters.

Meal Prep & Leftovers: Glass is King

For anything going in the fridge, freezer, or microwave, glass containers are unbeatable. They don’t absorb odors or stains, making them perfect for tomato sauce, mustard, or anything with strong colors.

Pro tip: Don’t fill containers to the very top—this prevents lid staining and makes cleaning easier. If you need deep cleaning help to tackle stubborn container stains, professional services can restore your containers to like-new condition.

Produce & Snack Containers: Organization Made Easy

Specialized produce containers with ventilated lids help your fruits and vegetables last longer while making your fridge look organized. The uniform sizes create a clean, accessible system that even kids can navigate.

Warning: Most of these containers aren’t dishwasher-safe—the heat can warp the plastic. If keeping up with handwashing feels overwhelming, a reliable cleaning service near me can help maintain your organized systems.

Pantry Organization: Maximize Your Space

Decanting bulk items into clear, snap-top containers helps food stay fresh longer and creates a visually appealing pantry. Labeling systems make everything easy to find, and you can even date items to track freshness.

For deep pantries, consider magazine-holder style containers with pull-out handles. These make accessing items in the back effortless and maximize every inch of space. As a leading Chicago cleaning company, we’ve seen how proper organization transforms kitchens.

Finding Your Container Balance

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to containers. The key is matching the right container to the right purpose:

• Thermos for hot school lunches
• BPA-free plastic for most lunch needs
• Glass for meal prep and microwaving
• Specialized containers for produce and pantry items

When life gets busy, don’t hesitate to schedule a cleaning with professionals who understand Chicago living. The right systems—and the right help—make maintaining a clean, organized home achievable for everyone.

There are so many different kinds of containers out there. How are you supposed to know which ones to buy and which ones to ignore? Plus, there are certain containers that work really well in certain cases and work terribly in others. So, in this video, I want to break down the different types of containers that you can find, as well as which containers make sense for what purpose. For example, you’re not going to use a container that you would use to store dry goods to send your kids to school with for lunch. They serve two different purposes, and trust me, you’re going to want two different containers for the job. Now, I’m going to link all of my favorite containers for you in the description box down below. I’ve got some Amazon links to that. So, buckle in, snap down your lids, and let’s learn about containers. And just a quick reminder if you haven’t done so already to subscribe to the Clean My Space channel and give this video a thumbs up for leopard. There are lots of different types of plastic containers available on the market. I know when I go to the dollar store, there are those really flimsy ones, ones that like you might have on hand, you know, when your friends come over and you want to just give them some leftovers and you don’t care if it comes back to you. To me, I don’t like those containers because they’re just not made well and I feel weird about that plastic. So, if you are going to spend money on plastic containers, please make sure that you get good quality ones that are BPA free, safe to use at home for your family. I know there are a whole host of issues associated with using plastic, particularly when it comes to using plastic with food that you ingest. So, we want to be careful and we want to make good choices. Keep that in mind. First, I want to talk about lunch containers because as a parent, this is something I have to deal with quite literally every day. So, one of the things that I invested in right at the beginning when I had to send Riley to school with lunch was a thermos. And this is actually a spare thermos that I keep at home because I expect at some point this will go missing on a Tuesday and I’m going to need it on a Wednesday. So, I do keep a spare handy. Now, I love a thermos for a couple of reasons. First, it keeps hot food hot. And Riley instructed me last year that she no longer wanted sandwiches for lunch. Okay. Okay, queen. Well, anyway, what I ended up doing was getting these thermoses and I put some form of hot food in there every morning. You simply boil water, pour it in, close the lid, let it sit for a couple of minutes, so it can heat up, and then you add your warm food to the thermos, and it stays warm for several hours. But the reason I really love it is because it’s stainless steel on the inside, and it doesn’t stain or hold on to odors. So if your child, I’m saying your child, not my child, if your child eats something with tomato sauce on it, because that certainly doesn’t happen over here, it might potentially stain the bottom of a plastic container. And as someone who has been in the cleaning space for a while, I can tell you that is a very difficult stain to get out and it looks unsightly. Plastic containers pick up odors over time. So if you’re putting any sort of hot food or any food that might have, you know, a strong odor or color in it, you might want to go to a thermos. Even if you don’t want to keep it warm, this is quite simply going to keep the staining and the discoloration away. Now, in terms of cleaning these, soapy water is what I do. You cannot put these in the dishwasher. Occasionally, you might notice some staining, discoloration, or odor absorption happening on the lid or even in the gasket. So, that’s just something to be aware of. But, if you give it an extra good cleaning, you should be in good shape. The other containers that I really like for school are these systemic containers. And that’s because they’re BPA free and they are also really easy to stack and store. They’re thick and they’re good quality. I’ve used systemic containers for Riley junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten, grade one, and now going into grade two. I really like their bento configurations because you can put sandwiches back in the day when she used to eat sandwiches. And then you it has little small snack containers. Uh it’s got a little circular one as well. And then it’s got these little dividers that make it much easier for you to configure lunches, especially for kids with smaller or pickier appetites. Now, you can put these in the dishwasher. I prefer to hand wash the containers that Riley brings to school with soapy water and dry them. And that’s simply because I don’t want them to pick up that dishwasher odor or flavor. And also because I find that they last longer when they are handwashed. I also know that when plastic is heated up, it can be a little bit concerning. Now, while these are BPA free, there are always concerns about what happens to your food when plastic heats up and what gets released. So, when it has to do with my daughter and her lunches, I try to keep everything cool, quite literally, and I don’t put anything hot in plastic. Now, what are the alternatives for lunches? Sure, you can send your kid to school with stainless steel bento boxes. The challenge for me is that I know my kid likes to see what her lunch is. So, plastic is see-through, and that’s one thing. Second, those stainless steel bento boxes are really expensive, and I’ve been there. And when your kid loses a container, um, that can get really frustrating. And of course, you could send your kid to school with glass containers, but that’s inherently dangerous, and for little kids, it’s quite heavy. So, to me, the options that I described here make the most sense for kids for lunches. and it sort of balances out health and safety with needs to feed your child. Now, when it comes to storing food for meal prep or leftovers, even if you’re marinating something, anything that’s going in the fridge or the freezer or something that I might want to put in the microwave goes into a glass container. Now, these I find to be really useful for a number of reasons, but first of all, I love them because glass does not hang on to odor or color. So go ahead, throw Dijon mustard in there. Throw some tomato sauce. Throw anything that you want. You are not going to have to worry about stains or odors clinging to glass. Very easy to clean. Now again, with the lids, you might run into this issue. So a quick tip is to not load your containers right up to the top. That is going to prevent you from having any of that staining. So, I have several of these glass containers on hand because I like to do meal prep and I’m a leftovers gal and I find it really convenient and easy to put this stuff into the microwave. Just makes a whole lot of sense. I am highly uncomfortable with the concept of putting anything plastic into the microwave. And if you’re the same, I think glass containers make the most sense in this application. Now, the other type of container that I have in the fridge is produce and snack containers. Now, I didn’t go crazy on these, but I certainly have a few of them cuz I do think they make sense. Produce containers are really helpful at keeping things like berries or other kind of smaller fruits and vegetables conveniently located without having to kind of stack and organize awkwardly shaped containers. And that I think is one of the huge benefits of having um these uniformsized containers in your fridge. It just makes it a lot easier to kind of place things, especially if you have a larger family and you go through a lot of food every week. This can really save space and also make things more visual so it’s easily accessible for kids that always say, “Oh, even adults, to be honest, uh who say there’s never anything to eat.” It’s like, yeah, there’s tomatoes, there’s mushrooms, there’s cucumbers, there’s strawberries. Yeah, it’s all here. Now, another reason why these are great is because um they help your produce last longer. They have these really cool little ventilated tops so you can open or close it to allow for air flow or to keep moisture in depending on what it is that you’re storing. Now, a quick word to the wise, do not put these in the dishwasher. They will bend as you can see from this one right here. Now, a few years ago, back in my old house, I invited Cass from Clutterbug over and we did a fun collab video where she helped me organize my pantry. And I was apprehensive, but I trust Cass because she’s like me, you know, she’s inherently lazy when it comes to cleaning and organizing and doesn’t want to have to do anything overly ridiculous or dramatic or expensive to keep everything neat and organized. So, I put my trust in her and a couple of the things she taught me was to decant certain bulk items and put them into containers with these snap top lids. And what this does is it helps food stay fresher longer, but it also helps you maximize space in your pantry. And while I would love to say that this is bougie and extra and annoying, at the end of the day, she was right and it does make a difference. So, she was kind enough to label these tops. These are easy enough to change off with a label maker. I can remove this with some googon or a hair dryer. Simple enough to change out. You can even just use a Sharpie and write whatever it is on there. Also, they’re clear so you can see what’s in there. But in the case of different types of flowers, it is helpful to label them. You can also put the date on there so you know the last time that you place something in there and you know when it needs to be replenished. But rather than having stacks of bags and boxes that can really add bulk and create a mess in your pantry, I will say this makes a big difference. Now you can go for the much more expensive type of containers. you know, the ones that are vacuum sealed and take out all the air and help everything last longer. Good. Uh, if you have that kind of money, I’d love to go on your yacht. Um, but if you want something that’s relatively basic and affordable, these are great. They’re also BPA free. She also introduced me to these, which almost look like magazine holders. Um, but what these are really great for is storing things in deep pantries. It has these pull out handles at the front and at the back. So, it makes it really easy for you to access whatever you might have in a deep pantry. Now, I’ve used these in a number of different configurations in my pantry here. I have them horizontally placed and that’s where I keep bottles of olive oils and vinegars and I found that to be really helpful. I used to also use this to keep bags and boxes of different types of rice and pasta, even though I think I might switch over to a system like this. I just have to see what works here. Either way, something like this is going to make an otherwise awkwardly shaped pantry really accessible and maximize your space. So, I really like these two. So, as you can see, there is a spectrum, a rainbow of containers that you can use in your home for different purposes. It’s just important to know which containers make sense for what and which ones don’t. Again, I’ve got links to all these containers, the ones that I love, in the description box down below. It’s Amazon links. We earn a small commission. Help support me and the crew. So, thank you very much. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is when you were a kid going to school, what was your favorite thing to get for lunch? I will tell you the thing I loved for lunch is outlawed. It was peanut butter and jam. I I don’t know what it is about peanut butter and jam. I just feel like it’s the most classic combination. And um boy, did I love days when I got peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Can’t say it was the most healthy, but I can say I adored it. Anyway, I’ve had to work really hard to figure out what to send Riley to school with for lunch. She is a picky eater and it’s been a struggle. Anyway, let me know what your favorite lunch was in the comments down below. If you’re not already, make sure that you subscribe to our newsletter. It’s called The Dirty Dish, and I’ve got a link for it down below. It’s funny, it’s quick, and it teaches you little cleaning tips, things that are quick and easy to digest. Not that you’re eating cleaning tips, but you know what I mean. And it also will be announcing when our Clean MySpace merch is available or any new product drops. And yeah, if you didn’t know we had merch, we do. It’s funny stuff. and it helps you kind of get in the mood, but like in a quirky and kind of sassy way to clean and organize. So, check it out. And hey, if you’re like Melissa, I love these produce containers. Girl, I’m all in. And you want to clean and organize your fridge, I’ve got a whole video over here where I show you the best way to clean your fridge. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next