Over time, we have amassed a chaotic collection of plastic containers. I’m sure that’s not unusual, since stuff expands to fill available space, especially if it’s polyethylene.
Due to the sheer number of containers in our plastics cupboard, it became extremely annoying to find a matching container and its lid. (Again, something that’s not usual according to the comic on this site.) We initially tried just buying a container system and sticking that in its own box in the cupboard, but it didn’t take long before it got out of hand, too. Then we struck upon the simple solution of just putting all the lids in one box and this has greatly improved the time to match a container with its lid.
I was going to post a proof of why this makes sense. But, then I figured, generalising the Internet Rule 34, if someone can think of it, it will be on the Internet. So, I tried to find it. And failed.
Perhaps it’s out there, but the reason I was searching for it was to save myself the time to write up a proof. Eventually too much time had been spent searching that I had neither my own proof nor someone else’s.
However, I did find the following delightful video of someone who is clearly very passionate about organising things, and who espouses the same strategy of putting lids in a separate box.
So, this post has become really quite pointless. However, I have managed to link to all of Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary and YouTube, so I trust the deities of the Internet will give me a pass this time.
I’ve been an advocate of this method for quite a while. Interesting that no one has yet posted a proof on the internet. By the way, a lecturer of mine always uttered a twist on the stuff expands to fill the available space idea – tasks always expand to fill the available time.
We’ve begun storing them with their lids on. Storing them lidless does not save as much space as I would have believed.
Interesting thought. I suspect this wouldn’t work for us, because even though we don’t carefully stack containers so they fit inside each other, we put them in the cupboard the “right way up” and they tend to just fall into other containers that way. On the other hand, putting the lids on would allow us to more efficiently stack the containers on top of other ones and decrease the non-containered space in the cupboard. But that would probably require having children that left the plastics cupboard alone.