Apr 1, 2022 4 min read

The cabinet under the kitchen island is where the lids live.

For short spells, the plastic containers live there too, but somehow they always manage to escape their partners – probably stealing away in the middle of the night to avoid the heat and pounding of the dishwasher cycle or the insulting stain of tomato sauce.

Do the containers go the way of that other sock? After years of hearing theories on where the other sock goes to, I’d decided they don’t actually go anywhere, but instead sacrifice themselves to make lint. How else do we explain the thick swaths of it that I peel from the lint trap after every dryer cycle? I don’t notice the towels getting thinner, so what’s making the lint? Maybe the socks have a job to do, and one of them turns himself into fluffy smithereens (usually the left one) and ends its life in the lint trap.

Anyway, where are all my plastic containers? And why do they flee topless?

Every couple of weeks I go to the dollar store and load up. I like the ones that come in sets of two for about a buck-fifty. I’ll toss a half-dozen of them into my hand basket: rectangular ones and taller round ones and a few of those adorable tiny ones. There’s something so satisfying about bringing the bag of them home, tearing the cardboard from around them, washing and drying them by hand and stacking them in the cabinet. OK, I don’t stack them, I toss them. But each one has a lid tightly snapped on.

Two days later I will dig into that cabinet for a container in which to put my dinner leftovers, and I will find nothing but an avalanche of blue lids, but no bottoms.

Perhaps I should ask my mother about this. She is never without a plastic container and lid, and I don’t think she ever buys them. Each time I visit, she sends me home with goodies, always tucked into Cool Whip containers. All those years growing up, there was a tower of Cool Whip containers on the basement freezer. Funny, I don’t recall ever being served that much Cool Whip.

Whatever, the mystery of the missing container continues. Here are some of my theories.

Are the inexpensive dollar store containers made of such flimsy plastic that they disintegrate in the dishwasher, leaving only the blue lids? Is that cabinet really a portal to another world, and the containers are happily living over there? And if so, why wouldn’t they need their lids when they get there?

Is Smoothie getting into that cabinet and pulling out the containers to chew them, and if so, where’s he hiding them? Have the containers had enough of all my tomatoey leftovers and looking bad for the rest of their lives, have just up and left?

And would that mean that plastic containers are sentient beings, deserving of compassion and better digs than a dark cabinet? This is wildly anthropomorphic conjecture on my part, but things are getting weird out there. And the calendar says it’s a day to be foolish.

These are things to consider, though. In the meantime, if your container situation is the opposite of mine, I have lids to give you – so many lids: square ones and rectangular ones and round ones, which make a very good Frisbee.

We could be container buddies, you and I. I’ll make us dinner and send you home with some of my tomato sauce. Just bring your own container.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.