A Beginner's Guide to Snack Safekeeping

After a lot of begging and pleading, you convince your owner or your mom or your dad to buy this glory of glorious snacks. And then you return home. But by the time you reach home, your appetite has swayed and you’d rather play a game of Kacheek Seek with your siblings for now, or you’ve been called to help someone, or perhaps you’ve simply forgotten. That snack, that glorious snack, will wait for you in the refrigerator until later. Or so you hope.

After every distraction has come and passed, your stomach is feeling particularly empty, and then you remember that snack you begged your owner or parent to get you, which is probably sitting in the kitchen, calling for you desperately.

Eeeeeeat meeeee... EEEEEEAT MEEEEEE..!

You run to the kitchen, its voice echoing in your ears. Your tongue swipes across your lips. (Or your beak. I’m not discriminating here.) Your stomach roars. Your eyes dilate. And THEN...

Tragedy! Someone else has eaten it already!

If you, like I, live with a family that is, well... not shy about food, then you need to read this. I am called Fang. I’m a red Shoyru and the head of the household, and my family is not, by any means, small. I don’t mean they’re fat, oh no. I mean that—not including myself—there are seventeen Neopians in my family. Seventeen. Do you know what seventeen voracious Neopets mean to a glorious snack, more glorious than any other snack before it? They mean tragedy!!

I have learned over the years that there are ways of having your snack of glory. There are many, many ways. Some are simple. Some involve complex plans, a treasure map, and maybe a guard-Meepit or two. But I won’t go into that in this particular article, because that... that was just ugly.

ANYWAY, if you want your snack, you’ll be wise to read closely and follow my instructions. Don’t question a professional. The first thing I must emphasize is this:

NEVER. FORGET. YOUR. GLORIOUS. SNACK.

You forget it, and it’s free game. In fact, the first thing you should do when you arrive at home after your little shopping trip is you should run to the kitchen, your snacky snack under your arm or in your hand or wherever, and you find its hiding place.

Hiding places for food can be difficult to find if you’d like it not to spoil, and even after that, they can be difficult to remember. Plus, there are all the shapes and sizes of packaging to think of. The following steps can help you with this task, though. I have listed them in no particular order, categorized by location. Remember that any of these techniques can be used in any location and really, I might’ve saved myself some time by not categorizing them in such a way. Then again, how else will I have reached the word limit for articles?

Anyway, read carefully and remember what I am about to tell you...

THE CABINETS:

Up in the cabinets, you have your favorite cereal, Crispy Crunchy Cookies. Of course, it’s your sister’s favorite cereal, too. How do you keep it all for yourself?

The ‘in plain sight’ method:

Yes, my cereal’s sitting right there. No, there. Yeah, that one. Oh, you don’t like that..? Well, what you don’t know is this: that box may say Gravel Cereal, but inside is a baggy of super-delicious, extra crunchy, Crispy Crunchy Cookies cereal.

That’s right, to follow this method, you play dirty.

Buy that box of generic-brand cardboard cereal and toss it to the birds. They probably won’t eat it, but still, it gets the cardboard crunch out of the way. Then just take the unopened bag of Crispy Crunchy Cookies and slip it on inside. Just remember what awful brand of cereal you’ve replaced or it could get confusing. Switch up the brand if your sister catches on. Oh, and NEVER tell your mom or dad or owner or older sibling that you like that cereal. It’ll be on the list every time they go shopping.

The ‘big black marker’ method:

This often doesn’t work, but it can be used if you’re capable of playing your parents or owner. Take that nice fat permanent marker and scribble your name all over that box. It can’t be missed, and at the very least, you can take that empty box to your parents or owner and get that sibling in trouble, BIG TIME. ...Unless it’s your parent or owner who did the wrongful snacking in the first place. You might have more trouble hiding anything if that’s the case, though.

The ‘very, VERY back’ method:

That’s right, you take that thing and you chuck it to the back of the cabinets. If it’s a lower cabinet, put it up higher at the back. If it’s an upper cabinet, put it toward the bottom at the back. Just be sure that whoever you’re hiding it from doesn’t like the food items stored in front of it, and keep in mind their height and their own methods for finding snacks.

THE FRIDGE:

That’s YOUR soda and you don’t want your dad drinking it all before the next shopping trip. After all, what are YOU gonna drink, WATER? But there’s more than one can and you’re not sure one hiding place will cut it. Now what?

The ‘everywhere at once’ method:

Take that six-pack of Neocola and spread it as far and as wide as you possibly can. One’s behind the milk, but another’s under the butter. There’s one down in the veggie drawer, and one at the back of the meats-and-cheeses drawer. Here’s one on the door, and the last, you used the very, VERY back method on. Now if someone comes across one, they’ll NEVER find the rest! Ha, ha, ha!

The ‘dark, somewhat sticky corner’ method:

No one wants to dig through the forest of leftovers just for one lousy can of soda. Then again, maybe YOU won’t want to to hide your lousy can of soda...

The ‘decoy’ method:

Convince whoever does the shopping to buy a better, tastier soda than the one you want for yourself. Then put that right out in front and stash your soda at the back. And, hey, since it’s right out in front, why don’t you have yourself a can of that soda. ...Hmm, that’s pretty good... Oh, drat, it’s all gone!

THE FREEZER:

The dreaded freezer. Open it, grab what you want, and get it closed before you end up an icicle. This is potentially the easiest place to hide things, but if someone else gets a taste for that yummy chocolate ice cream, they might go on an arctic expedition to find it.

The ‘ewww...’ method:

So you want to keep the chocolate ice cream to yourself, huh? Well, there’s more than ice cream in the freezer. Take that bag of frozen peas, or the chunky beef stew that your mom froze three years ago, and just put that carefully on top or beside your ice cream. As long as the label is hidden, no one will even know it’s there...

The ‘don’t go there’ method:

Your mom likes cheesecake. So much so that she always has some in the freezer in case she ‘needs’ it. And no one dares to take any, ‘cause she’s known to take limbs off for the sake of her own snack. This method kind of goes hand-in-hand with the ‘ewww...’ method. You just take that box of cheesecake and put it right over your ice cream. No one else is brave enough to move that box, so the ice cream will be safe there.

The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ method:

Time for an excavation. You take as much as you’re willing to out of that freezer, and then you place that ice cream at the very bottom. Then pile everything back in and hope that you, yourself, don’t forget. No one’s desperate enough to spend THAT much time looking for the ice cream, so it’s perfectly safe there. ...What were we talking about? Oh. I think we’re out of ice cream!

And that’s a beginner's guide to snack safekeeping. Try these methods out for yourself and see which ones work best!

Oh yeah, and one last tip: keep in mind that if all else fails, all you’ve got to do is follow your mom’s method: start removing limbs as punishment for anyone finishing your snack. This works better if you’re a big, strong Skeith, or if your siblings are zombies.

Good luck hiding, and thanks for reading!