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Comment by learnstats2 | Hacker News Reader

What do you use Pringles cans for that makes them so useful: say you were buying one per week?

I don’t buy one per week. Maybe a few cans per year. I use them for storing sleeves of soda crackers (they fit perfectly even though the crackers are squares). They’re also good for storing snacks of various kinds, dry spaghetti noodles (or any pasta, really). Pretty much any dry goods that you don’t want crushed are a great fit!

Cool! I'll have to go out and buy some Pringles, I need those things done.

Normally I don't buy Pringles at all, not in decades. Because, honestly, they're the consistency of pasteboard and taste of mostly salt. The bottom rung on the snack ladder. I snack on nothing instead of Pringles if that's the only option.

But the can! That seems worthwhile now that you call out its many uses.

The great thing about the cans is that they're reasonably air-tight. I find if I open a sleeve of soda crackers and then try to close them up and store them in the original box they're pretty much guaranteed to be stale by about half-way through the sleeve.

Not so if I store them in a Pringles can. They stay fresh for way longer due to the confined space and decent-sealing lid.

How would they go with coffee beans, I wonder!

Wouldn't it be better to find someone that likes Pringles and take their can when they're done? Buying something you don't enjoy so you can reuse the packaging, that most people throw away, seems like a poor solution.

Yeah but would I store food in a paperboard can that somebody else had grubbed their hands around in? Maybe its not dooable.

Don't all those things come in packaging already? Aren't you just switching one package for another? What's the difference in keeping pasta in the plastic wrapping it comes in?

Zip ties!

I can think of more uses if you cut them shorter. Pencil holder, ... ok that's it.

When I was younger and poorer they made a decent speaker (amplifier? echo chamber?) in a pinch, if you taped an earbud into the open end, facing the bottom of the tube.

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