"Doris Night" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 2 Aug 2016 12:36:12 -0700, "Julie Bove"
> > wrote:
>
>>"dsi1" > wrote in message
...
>
>>> Well a house full of soda is certainly intriguing. 
>>
>>I don't recall having a lot of soda in that house. No place to store it.
>>It
>>was a very tiny house.
>
> I can't picture having so much soda that you wouldn't be able to store
> it all.
That house didn't have much storage room. There was no pantry. My brother
and I shared a room with a small closet. My parents had an average sized
closet in there room. I think there was a small linen closet and small coat
closet. One car garage that barely fit the car. No work bench in there. We
did have a small metal shed in the back but it was for garden stuff.
>
> In my house, currently, I have a 12-pack of club soda that is in the
> laundry room on my dryer. Husband has a case of 24 beer sitting on the
> floor next to the recycle containers.
That's nothing! I really can't remember too much about drinks back then. We
did move from there almost 50 years ago. I do remember that my paternal
grandpa owned a Western Auto store and he had a Coke machine in it. It had
the lid that opened up from the top and you had to move the bottle like a
maze to get it out. Then you had to use the opener on the side of the
machine to pop the top off of the bottle. I do remember extracting the
bottles a couple of times. Perhaps a customer let me do it. I don't remember
drinking them. I do remember begging for something called a chocolate
soldier at some machine somewhere. It was horrible. The problem? My parents
said if I got it, I had to drink the whole thing. I just could not. It was
very sweet.
Perhaps we didn't have a lot of soda when we lived there because most likely
we couldn't have afforded it. I do remember my parents always being on a
diet. They drank Sego and bought horrid little fruit flavored candies that
stuck to your teeth. Not hard, not gummy, not jelly but kind of a
combination of those things. You couldn't really bite into them and they
didn't taste so good. My mom used to give me candies in her 1/4 cup metal,
dry measuring cup. It wasn't full. I remember getting those things more
often than I'd like to and a few times some M & Ms.
I also remember my dad getting ice and using the big red metal cooler for
drinks when we had company. And using some grape jelly jars as juice glasses
for breakfast. They had the Flintstones on the outside.
I also remember Fizzies. I liked to watch them fizz in the glass but I
didn't like the resulting drink. Too sweet. And we did have various fruit
flavored powdered drinks that were made with Cyclamates or Saccharine
instead of sugar. And tons of iced tea.
Perhaps part of the problem with that house is that we had a rather small
fridge. It was the old kind that needed to be defrosted and had a small
compartment for ice cubes but it had no more room for frozen stuff. I would
imagine that soda would have taken up a lot of valuable refrigerator space.
And my mom did not drive when I was really young so she couldn't go to the
store as there wasn't one nearby.
Once we moved here, we used the lower shelf on the workbench for soda. It
was usually Shasta and we usually bought about 4-6 flats per week. I gather
that the term "flat" is a PNW one but it is one of the old timey flat boxes
that held 24 cans. Soda was very cheap in those days. Perhaps 8 or 10 cents
a can, depending on if it was on sale or not. My parents were fond of the
black cherry cola which is no longer made. At least not in diet. But we also
got diet cola, diet fruit flavors and diet ginger ale. Sometimes we also got
RC and when Tab came out, that. In later years all sorts of other stuff. The
rest of my family loved Mr. Pibb and Dr. Pepper. I did not.
This is how much soda we bought each week, just for the family and neighbor
kids. We had a lot of kids on that street when we were younger and we pretty
much just went house to house some days. In later years, we bought even more
soda. My dad was a chief in Indian Guides and was also a leader for our
Junior Achievement group. He brought drinks and snacks to sell to earn
money.
>
> I think we could double or triple (or quadruple) the above amounts
> without running into storage issues.
>
That could be. I have two of these:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
One in the kitchen with cleaning supplies, paper products, trash bags, etc.
The other is in the garage for beverages. No soda on that with the exception
of occasional bottles which we normally do not buy. It is full of water,
seltzer, tea, sports drinks, coconut water and sometimes juice.
I also have a shelving unit with 6 of these on it:
https://smile.amazon.com/BEVERAGE-DI...spenser+12+can
And no, I didn't pay that price. Not anywhere close. One has tomato and
other vegetable juices and the rest is stuff for my husband. Although he
doesn't drink as many cans as I do, he likes a big assortment of things so I
buy them on sale. The bottom shelf of the shelving unit holds about 12, 12
packs. Depends on how they are packaged. The Shasta are not in a dispenser
pack. That space is generally full. And sometimes we have some more 12 packs
next to the shelf. I try to really stock up when cheap. Or if we are having
company, I might have to buy something I wouldn't usually buy.
My soda consumption is down some now that we have the ice maker. I am trying
to drink at least one Chug bottle full of ice water, sometimes with
flavoring or lemon and/or lime slices. And I have been drinking a lot of
seltzer now that I have an online source for it.