Unsolved mysteries of your kitchen.

[furryman]

@ThelmaLou

Does anyone ever have the slightly different problem where you remember buying many cans of (for example) tomato paste/sauce over a period of time-- in fact, it seems like you buy some every time you go to the store. But when you go to make a recipe you can never find any of them?

That happens to me with small rolls of Scotch tape (of any brand). I buy those by the six-pack or dozen but can NEVER find a roll of tape when I need it.

I used to have that problem with scissors. So I bought enough pairs that I could put at least two in every room of the house. Now just about no matter where you sit down in my house, you can reach out your arm and find a pair of scissors. Or two.

Yeah, maybe I won that battle. But I’ll never win the War of Objects.

I keep buying batteries, put them someplace “safe” then forget where I put them. If I ever move, I’ll need a whole moving van just for batteries.

[TruCelt]

When Celtling was a toddler, we went through combs by the dozen. Simple wide-toothed plastic combs that we used in the bath and at the dressing table to com her beautiful curly hair.

I would by a package of five or ten at the dollar store and within two weeks they’d be gone. We lived in that house for two years, and somewhere in it are at least 50 plastic hair combs. I expected to find them when we moved out but nope, nothing. The mystery remains.

In our current kitchen it’s the multiplying macaroni. We always have two metric tons of macaroni noodles, even after making a mega-batch of mac-n-cheese. They just never decrease.

[Beckdawrek]

I have had the same hairbrush for many years, actually since highschool. My sisters and I got the same brush for xmas one year. I am the only one who still has it. Apparently they were quite expensive at the time. I can’t keep up with my cel phone, or remember to put gas in the car, or ever find a hair tie, But, I have that freaking 20?? year old hair brush. It’s crazy.

[kaylasdad99]

@wolfman

As the weather changes I have been taking stock of the pantry to see things forgotten over the summer months, to see if there is anything I should try to plan to use in the near future.

Among my canned good I have 6 cans of pinto beans. And I have no idea why. I don’t use many pinto beans, and when I do I used dried ones. I mostly keep canned beans around for no effort soups and stews, and I just don’t use Pinto beans in those for whatever reason. I have no memory of buying pinto beans, and no idea what I would have planned on using them for. The more interesting thing is that it is actually two sets of three cans of unexplained pintos, from different brands carried by different stores.

I guess I have attracted the attention of the Canned Pinto Bean Fairy somehow.

You bought them in the Spring, intending to donate them to the Post Office’s Stamp Out Hunger food drive, and absent-mindedly put them in the pantry. All is not lost . Canned pinto beans have a LONG shelf life. Donate them to a food bank this month, or save them until next May, and donate them then.

[Kimballkid]

Since this thread has kind of moved to the bathroom: Why does the center cap that covers the screw on my shower/bath adjuster thingy keep popping off even though no one is anywhere near the bathroom and I have no pets and I’m the only one in the house. Ghosts, I tells ya, it’s ghosts.

[gnoitall]

@Shoeless

My kitchen mystery, which I have mentioned before, is how I can manage to lose the twist-tie for the bread in less than ten seconds. Get the bread out to make a sandwich, take off the twist-tie, grab a couple slices of bread, close the bag… and the twist-tie is gone. I can spend the next 20 minutes looking for it but it is nowhere to be found. Just poof, vanished.

Do you have a cat? While he was alive, Andy the Fierce Hunter Kitty would have been the explanation for that event in our house.

“Andy! Do you have my twist tie?”

<Andy looks up, twist tie obviously dangling from his mouth>

<Andy dashes off out of sight, because there’s no way he’s going to give up his toy>

[carnivorousplant]

@Kimballkid

Since this thread has kind of moved to the bathroom: Why does the center cap that covers the screw on my shower/bath adjuster thingy keep popping off even though no one is anywhere near the bathroom and I have no pets and I’m the only one in the house.

Does the thread around the screw expand when hot water runs around it? I have noticed that the screw on cold water tap in the bathtub faucet slowly backs out of it’s fitting.

[Kimballkid]

I don’t think so, the knob itself is never loose. The cap popping off usually happens well after the shower has been used and the bathroom is ‘room temperature’ again.

[Jennshark]

I finally solved the Big Mystery a few years ago.

I don’t cook at all, but I was having klutz issues with simple kitchen stuff: spilling/breaking coffee mugs because the microwave door “opens wrong,” stuff difficult to wrangle out of cupboards, stuff in strange places, etc.

Duh, it’s because SharkWife, our kitchen denizen, is LEFT HANDED and the kitchen is set up to her specs and convenience (as it should be). I can’t believe how long it took my righty self to realize this . . .