Jun 23, 2017 3 min read

I was raised in a family that had the strongly held belief that one can ever have too many plastic containers with lids. As long as I can remember, there was a stack of empty Cool Whip containers on the basement fridge. I don’t remember my mom serving much Cool Whip, but there they were in all their teetering plastic glory, waiting to be filled with leftovers.

A bit of that tendency wound up in my genes. We don’t eat Cool Whip, but we do frequent the dollar store, where you can buy about a thousand cheap lidded plastic containers for a penny. I stock up and stash them in the pantry closet; open that door too quickly and you’re likely to be buried in an avalanche of blue plastic lids.

We had to get everything out of that closet this week to allow the workers to get in there. Our home renovation is finally in its last stage: the replacement of the hardwood floors. The farmer cleared out the closet and deposited the contents onto the kitchen island. With everything excavated from the closet, I took the opportunity to hunt for our rice cooker. But first, I had to dig around the lids.

There were thin blue ones, heavy red ones with little wings that snap down, cute small ones for the single-serving cups of fruit I would pack in my kids’ lunches. And yes, there were white Cool Whip lids, most certainly carried in by my mom.

I looked at all of that, and then looked around some more and noticed something. There are no containers to go with the lids. Somehow, in the raging river of cooking and food and leftovers, the containers get swept away or swallowed up or sent home with Thanksgiving goodies.

The math of this is all off. I buy lidded containers, bring them home and stash them in the closet. As needed I break into a pack to collect dinner leftovers, snapping the lid on tight. Why, then, the discrepancy? Maybe it’s the cereal-milk-cereal-milk equation. True, ours is not exactly a symmetrical universe. How else do we explain what happens to the other sock? Or why, two days after having my bangs professionally trimmed, one side will be a half inch longer than the other.

And it’s not just the plastic container lids. There were glass and stainless-steel lids from pots I can’t remember ever having, including a heavy cast iron lid to a Le Creuset pot I never owned but wish I had.

That closet is a sad disco of lids standing around like a row of wallflowers. I counted 16 plastic container lids and a dozen metal and glass lids. I think I might be a hoarder.

There’s not much to be done with stray lids. I suppose a pair of metal ones could serve as cymbals for a one-man band, and the round plastic ones probably make a pretty decent Frisbee.

There are people who would photograph the better lids and post them on eBay, but I am not one of those people. In our effort to clear 22 years of stuff from this house, we’ve adopted a brutal dismissiveness toward all inanimate objects. The lids are in the trash.

There is some good news: I found the lid to the rice cooker. The bad news: I lost the rice cooker.

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