If You Eat Cheese (Ever), You Need This $15 Container

I cannot tell you how often I’ve googled “how to store [insert type of cheese].” Despite the amount of time I spend thinking about cheese and the amount of space in my fridge that’s devoted to cheese, my brain just can’t seem to retain information on whether parchment paper, a resealable container, or the original packaging is the best storage choice and in which scenarios.

The concern is that cheese needs to breathe, and not storing it correctly can change its flavor and cut down its shelf life. Having to throw away cheese because of improper care on my part is certainly something I want to avoid — hence my frequent googling.

While having my very own temperature-controlled cheese cave is just not in the cards for me at the moment, I have been gifted with another wonderfully effective solution — one that’s affordable and requires no online searching to use properly. I’m talking about Tupperware’s CheeSmart cheese storage container.

Oftentimes, when packing up to head home after visiting my boyfriend’s family, his mom gifts us a hefty block or two of Manchego or Old Amsterdam — just to make sure we’ll be stocked as soon as we arrive back at our apartment. During one such parting, she tacked on two extra CheeSmarts she had gotten years ago: one smaller square version and another larger rectangular one.

She told us that the containers kept that potent cheese smell from taking over her entire fridge. Meanwhile, I was thinking that this was just the thing to get the designated cheese shelf in our fridge in order and save me a bit of fuss with all the unwrapping and repackaging.

While the CheeSmart looks like a fairly simple plastic container, its lid has special holes to help with condensation control. This design somehow manages to keep odors in while controlling the moisture level. All you have to do is simply place your unwrapped cheese inside, and the container does the work preserving its taste and freshness.

You’ll no longer find cheese storage questions in my search history anymore and my fridge remains wonderfully full of cheese but free of their strong odor. And I haven’t wasted any cheese due to poor storage.

You can snag a CheeSmart Mini for just $15, or the slightly bigger CheeSmart Small Square for $20 on the Tupperware website. While mine are different colors than the ones sold today, the fact that the product design looks basically unchanged even after all of these years further proves to me that the CheeSmart is a solid idea and worthwhile investment. Plus, there’s more proof in the cheese that’s sitting in my fridge right now.