Bag Lady and Shopping Siren love white clothes in summer.

On other people. Other very daring people.

Personally, Shopping Siren hasn’t worn anything on the eggshell to old lace spectrum since the Great Ketchup Incident of 1998. After a 20-plus-year drought, Bag Lady bought a pair of white pants this spring and has worn them strategically. (Will there be kids? Dogs? Chocolate? In the closet they stay.)

It is time, we feel, to lighten up.

But unless we want to run under a sprinkler spraying Scotchguard (not recommended) or spend the rest of the season sporting spots of potato salad from last week’s picnic and sauce from yesterday’s barbecue on our new ivory ensembles, we need a safer way to eat this summer. 

Obviously, we need the perfect paper plate. So we devised a fool-proof test.

The set up: Eight L-A stores. The lowest-cost disposable plates on the shelf. Paper or coated paper only, no foam or hard plastic. (For fairness. And because we’re cheap.) Rate durability, looks and price from 1 to 5.

The experiment: Let four spoonfuls of vegetarian baked beans soak on each plate for 30 minutes. We’ve ruined shorts balancing plates on our knees in half that time, so it should be a fair representation of real life conditions. Minus the mosquitoes.

Plates. Beans. White clothes.

It’s on!

• Hobby Lobby, 7 inches, 24 pack

Durability: 5. No leaking, no wetness, no bulging on the bottom, and it’s almost-a-bowl shape kept everything sloshing in one contained space. In short, perfection.

Looks: 5. We went with a summery orange, but there were tons of colors to choose from. Got a party theme? There’s a plate to match.  

Price: 1. $2.99 (12.5 cents per plate)

Bottom line: Expensive! In fact, they were the most expensive plate we tested. But they’re also among the prettiest and most durable. So maybe worth the price for keeping your whites white and your barbecue sauce where it should be.

• Shaw’s, 6.87 inches, 48 pack

Durability: 4. No leakage, but we could definitely feel beans and liquid on the bottom, suggesting this thin plate might not hold up longterm.

Looks: 5. Blue filigree around a white center. Could be contemporary. Could be traditional. Could be fun and flirty. It’s like the chameleon of paper plates.

Price: 4. $2.50 (5.2 cents per plate)

Bottom line: Fairly durable, looks good, great price and you get a lot in a package. Score!

• Wal-Mart, 9 inches, 90 pack

Durability: 2. Floppy as heck. Bulged on the bottom after 30 minutes. Generally not good.

Looks: 1. You’re trapped on a deserted island, looking for signs of life and out of the corner of your eye, you see a scrap of white sticking out of the sand and think, “Yes! People have been here and I now have a plate!” You run up to it and it’s this plate. You toss it back into the ocean and resume your despair.

Price: 5. $2.14 (2.4 cents per plate) The second cheapest we tested. And that was easy to tell.

Bottom line: These are not the paper plates you’re looking for.

• Dollar Tree, 6.8 inches, 15 pack

Durability: 5. A perfectly fine job from a perfectly fine plate.

Looks: 5, with a caveat. It’s aqua, green and yellow flower pattern is very summer and very LOUD. But we dug it. Clearly, we’re OK saying something with our plates.

Price: 3. $1 (6.6 cents per plate). Not the best. Not the worst.

Bottom line: If you’re planning a picnic for 40, you might want to move on to something with a lower per-plate cost. But if you’re just hanging out with a few friends, this could be the way to go.

• Family Dollar, 10 inches, 16 pack

Durability: 3. After 30 minutes, it hadn’t bulged. Yet. A damp bottom indicated leakage was probably imminent. Raise your hands if you want a damp bottom? No, we didn’t think so.

Looks: 4. A conservative swirling blue-and-white pattern that may look a little like your grandma’s china. You decide whether that’s a good thing.

Price: 2. $1.77 (11 cents per plate) The package is a good price, but the per-plate cost will send you spinning.

Bottom line: A lurking disaster in plate form.

• Dollar General, 7 inches, 16 pack

Durability: 3. No leakage, but there was an underside bulge that suggested, if given another 10 minutes, bad things to come.

Looks: 3. On the upside, there was an array of fun summer colors to choose from. On the downside, the lip on this rather flat plate is just slightly higher than a baked bean — it’ll be difficult to corral even an unwieldy chip.

Price: 3. $1 (6.3 cents per plate) Not the worst, not the best.

Bottom line: You can do better.

Best find: Hannaford, 6.8 inches, 48 pack

Durability: 5. Nothing to see here except an amazing plate working as nature intended.

Looks: 4. Eh, also, nothing to see here. It’s patterned oranges and blues are a little austere, more serviceable than fun.

Price: 4. $2 (4.2 cents per plate) Great price per package and per plate.

Bottom line: You can have your cake and eat it, too. Off this plate.

Think twice: Big Lots, 9 inches, 100 pack

Durability: 1. The plate was thin and floppy, and the beans soaked through to the table. Not fun. Not fun at all.

Looks: 1. White. Paper. Dull.

Price: 5. $2.30 (2.3 cents per plate) These had the lowest cost per plate of any we tested. Which is good, since price was their only redeeming factor.

Bottom line: Floppy. Dull. Cheap. You’re none of those things, so secure your fabulous self a fabulous plate.

Bag Lady and Shopping Siren’s true identities are protected by a pair of stylish, sweater-wearing Doberman pinschers (who will be happy to clean the barbecue off your plate before there’s any possibility of leaking) and the Customer Service counter at the Sun Journal. You can reach them at baglady@sunjournal.com and shoppingsiren@sunjournal.com.

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