There is, I have determined, someone who comes into our house several times a year and makes off with the lids for our plastic storage containers.
There can be no other explanation.
I know this because I do inventory every now and then. I will open the cupboard where the storage containers live. It will be a gong show, but I will do my best to make order of the chaos.
I will put the containers in one pile and the lids in another.
“What are you doing?” the husband will inquire. Pretty much every single time.
“Doing the storage match-y thing,” I will remind him. “Every container that has a lid gets to stay. Those that don’t are sent to recycling.”
The husband has seen this exercise. Many, many times.
“OK,” he will say.
And it will be OK — for a little while anyway. I will shut the storage container drawer, satisfied that every piece has a partner. But then, at some point, the odd little lid thief will do his mischief once again.
“Darn it!” I will say, once dinner is done. I will have, oh, some leftover spaghetti sauce or some chili or some stir fry that needs to be packed up, and I will be hunting for a container.
“What’s wrong?” the husband will ask.
“This is the perfect container!” I will say. “But there’s NO LID for it! How can that be? I just DID the match-y thing!”
The husband will shrug his shoulders.
I have no idea why anyone would want to break into our home and steal our lids, but I can only assume it’s because the thief has a peculiar thing for lids.
The only other explanation, I suppose, is that this is an inside job. It is, of course, within the realm of possibility that someone — and I’m not naming names here — will have emptied the dishwasher and absent-mindedly put the lids somewhere else. Like in the cereal cupboard, say. Or the garbage can.
“When you emptied the dishwasher yesterday,” I said to the husband a couple of days ago, “did you happen to come across any lids?”
“Lids?” he asked. “Not sure. But if there were lids in there, I guess I came across them.”
And that was that.
And so, these days when I need to fill a container with leftovers, I top it with paper towels, given that plastic wrap is no longer acceptable in our household.
The disappearing lids remain a mystery and could be just about anywhere — in the grips of a thief or in that netherworld where all those missing dryer socks go. There’s also the chance that I know what’s at play. As I say, I’m not naming names.