Why does everything seem to break, fall apart, or get lost at different rates than the rest of its set? For example, have a lot less teaspoons with our everyday set of flatware than we did when we bought the set. Where do they go? My guess is, they are sitting in a landfill somewhere. Not on purpose, however. These little spoons get taken in school lunches. They fall into the garbage disposal. Unfortunately, because they are small, many of them have been chipped up in there. So I am left with a set of mismatched flatware.

Glassware is another problem. We must be a very clumsy family because the juice glasses and the wine glasses don’t last very long at our house. It seems that every week I am throwing out another glass. We have so many different remains of wine glass sets that we don’t even need to use wine charms!

Of course, everyone has the sock problem. At our house, it is mostly the kid’s socks. I thought I would solve it by going into everyone’s sock drawer and gather all the missing socks. After matching very few pairs, I put the rest in a bag in the laundry room, thinking that I would have the rest matched during the week of laundry. The result? Even more single socks to add to the bag. I gave up. Now everyone just wears two socks, whether they match or not.

We will soon be entering the season of gloves, hats and scarves. I have one pair of gloves. I have somehow been able to keep track of them for a couple years. My kids, however, go through gloves left and right (pun intended). At the beginning of the season, I stock up and buy at least 3 or 4 pairs per kid. Before the season is over, most of the pairs have been separated. I think that this year I am going to buy the same kind of glove for each kid. Hopefully we won’t be left with just right or left handed gloves!

The sad thing is that our family has gotten used to this mismatched existence. Until recently, our towels were left overs from matching sets, too. When we bought new towels, we only bought four of each color. Our beautiful new towels don’t match each other or even the colors of the bathrooms. Strange for some, but perfect for us!