Quantum Physics and my Kitchen

Once a year, I try to go through and clean out my kitchen cabinets and hall closets. This year in particular I have been more intent on cleaning because of the move. I look for items that I haven't used in over a year and either put them back into rotation or donate them to charity. I have been doing this since I moved into this apartment back in 1999. This seems like a totally normal thing to do which I'm sure everyone has done at some point. However, I have discovered something odd about my kitchen.

Every time I do this I discover that I have an over abundance of one item in my kitchen. The first time I realized something was off was when I realized I had five turkey basters. Now, I have never owned a turkey baster. At this point, I had three roommates and all of them claimed that they never had a turkey baster and it wasn't theirs. I willing to concede that I may have owned one of them, but not five.

Next, eight spoons that didn't match any of the silverware I owned nor the silverware of past roommates materialized. After that, it was five different kinds of beaters that didn't anyone’s mixer. This time, it’s five strainers/colanders. One of them I know is mine. The other four are new to me including one stainless steel one. It's not like I had a party and people just left their strainers at my house like Tupperware or a serving bowl.

Now, I do this every year and I would have noticed these things adding up. They all seem to appear between the yearly re-organizations. None of them repeat once I've discovered them. For instance, I just have the one turkey baster now. No new spoons or bowls or beaters have re-spawned in my kitchen.

My theory is that since matter/energy is neither gained nor lost that these items are formerly the lost socks and clothes that go into the laundry and never re-emerge. I lose socks and wash clothes and whatnot all the time. I think they are not really lost and instead have been transforming themselves into these random kitchen items. It makes sense because my kitchen and my laundry room share a wall. Now Tupperware would seem to be the most logical thing to transform into because I wouldn't necessarily notice, but my Tupperware is kept in a cabinet in the dining room.

They never seem to transform into anything with any kind of mechanical workings. They also seem to regenerate in groups of five or eight. I’m willing to believe at least one of them was originally mine and maybe one of a past roommate, but I cannot account for the rest of them.

Sadly, these items never seem to be things I can use multiples of. I would gladly lose a pair of pants for some new pots and pans or a shirt for some new cookie sheets.