Paperclips clothespins pencils and small spoons

There is a phenomenon that seems to have persisted for many decades and places, one that is so ... silly ... that it hardly ever gets mentioned. It is one of those things that even sometimes gets one to wonder if one remembers correctly - but occasionally it is a definite memory item, impossible to ignore.

It is the phenomenon of the vanishing small items that one handles a lot, that are fairly low-cost disposable and usually widely available in stores, surely no need to steal them from someone else. The items disappear off one's working space while one is away for a brief time - and on return, when reaching for the small item, it is no longer there and even if an intense effort is made, the item is just definitely not there anymore.

In my experience, many decades ago, the items were paperclips, pencils and disposable ball point pens. All were low-cost items that people could get easily at stores, and one would think there would be no need for people to snatch the items from one's desk or other workspace while one was away for awhile. Nowadays the vanishing items are primarily the two-piece wooden clothespins I use for re-closing opened packages in my kitchen. Also the small plastic spoons I normally use when eating, the kind of spoons that are sturdy and for camping and come in sets with forks and knives - I don't much use the forks and knives and they don't seem to vanish, but the spoons that I handle a lot, do the vanishing. Last I looked, was only one of them left, and I had bought at least three sets of them each set with four of each item, that would be 12 of those small spoons, and only one is left. I recall one broke its handle and was tossed, but that leaves at least ten of the spoons vanished out of my kitchen in recent years.

In fact, the significant part, the commonality part I think, after sifting memories of this seemingly insignificant thing happening over many decades and places, is that the items are small and had been handled by me a significant amount. And that they are normally expendable low cost items that it is hard to see why anyone would go out of their way to snatch them off my workspace - or from my kitchen, in the case of the clothespins and spoons. The items normally are very cheap and easy to buy for themselves. Like, even if intruders bothered to stalk me and know I was away from home when they do a routine intrusion into my home, why snatch the small items that surely will get my attention to their loss when I reach for them and they are gone? Is it an infamous "Killroy was here" kind of message, or just sheer mischief knowing it will puzzle me?

The occasion for writing this blog post is the missing clothespins. Problem is, I don't know where to buy any more of them; they were common in my youth but now people use clothes dryers not clotheslines to dry their clothes anymore, as I do too. Many years ago I had bought a small sack of the old original two-piece clothespins, the kind with a spring in the middle, and has been my little stash of them ever since. I never throw a clothespin away. So when I suddenly need a clothespin to close a newly opened food package, and see none are where I keep the ones I have taken off emptied bags, and indeed a check in the kitchen and fridge discovers that they all or maybe only one is left in use, and all the others are gone; this only happens after I have been away from home awhile such as out shopping.

So I am stuck with having to leave the bags open, or going to my little stash of new wooden clothespins, now getting a bit low, and get out another half dozen of them. That is my current situation at present - if I don't get out some of my few remaining new clothespins, they won't vanish next time I leave home to go do something.

Now, I would think it would be an enormous effort to stalk me and intrude into my residence just to snatch my small spoons and wooden clothespins. People just do not go to all that trouble to burglarize someone's home to get such low-cost items.

Unless there were some value in that they were items that I had personally handled a lot and were small and I probably kept them in back of my mind as to their being used and where they were. Who would find value in such items, and why, I wonder.

Yes, it seems a silly subject, paper clips and clothespins vanishing.

One possible correlation seems farfetched, but comes to mind, that the people who have the expertise and equipment to do something called "Radionics" - a really weird thing seems to me but apparently utilized by a large number of people who do not seem weird at all - they use a small object that a target person has handled to place in the machine as a "Witness" and it somehow enables the radionics practitioner do something related to the person associated with that "Witness" small item. I have heard of it because sometimes such a thing is used to help in healing someone, I have heard, and healing is a long time interest I have. But I get the impression that most of the users of the Radionics thingys use them more to get information than to heal.

And that is a whole different subject - or is it?