For some reason we are missing teaspoons. We have the exact same number of big forks, small forks, tablespoons, and knives, but the teaspoons have dwindled to less than five. I am not sure if we have three or four of them.
Being a domestic goddess, I decided to remedy this situation by buying spoons on Amazon. Just spoons, not flatware set. Plain black teaspoons, how hard could it be, right?
Small problem: most of the teaspoons on Amazon are of foreign make, and their idea of what constitutes a teaspoon isn’t the same as ours.
If at first you don’t succeed…
Third time is the charm, right?
And finally.
My husband has banned me from purchasing additional teaspoons. Instead we jointly bought a new set from Wayfair.
I’ll let you know if it has the proper teaspoons in it.
My local Good Will has boxes of loose flatware, so I dug through until I found around 8 teaspoons that were close-ish to matching each other.
I go to goodwill for extra teaspoons, also.
I discovered this option as well in the last few months. Very helpful!
Ditto — any thrift store. So what kind of metal, exactly, is black?
What is the link for the gold set 3rd in I ADORE it (poor size of teaspoon to be forgiven – possibly)?
Thank you!!
Good luck with your flatware dilemma. 🙁
At our house it’s the big forks and big spoons. I have found a couple in the trash. No one ever knows how they ended up in there :-/
Beaker started stealing and hiding spoons when she was about 4 months old. She also stole socks. I have gone thru 48 teaspoons. I bought cheap ones, my friends bought rummage ones, and I finally started shopping at Goodwill. I’ve given up. She doesn’t steal serving spoons.
I just wish I knew what she did with them!
Oh my God *dying*
I gave up.
I’m still laughing. I didn’t realize this was a widespread problem. We inherited a “set” of nice flatware, the style is long out of production. For some reason we have knives, and we do have teaspoons. Heck, we even have butter knives. that sort of threw me. I never really considered them basic flatware. However we have two (2) forks. Now forks are basic. It seems that my father in law, a lovely man who should never- ever have been allowed in a kitchen insisted on using the forks to get things out of the garbage disposal. How 4 forks came to the same grisly end has to be a testament to male stubbornness.
Big Lots has boxes of flatware. You can buy a set or just a box of spoons, etc.
Ditto Costco
When I was a kid we would put out paper plates, styrofoam cups and the good silver (service of 36) for our family Christmas Eve dinner with extended family. After the party and the cleanup we would count all the silver. If any pieces were missing we spent Christmas Day going through ever trash bag until we found every piece. Fun times ??
BUT they are very pretty spoons
Teaspoons. Have you looked in all those containers and packets of things that generally only require a tsp in a recipe? Baking powder, dry mustard, the sugar bowl, etc. That’s where my mother leaves all hers. Just a thought.
I’m pretty sure the spoons are hanging out with the rings 😉
In the safest spot EVER (they’re safest when hiding).
Here in Switzerland it is missing ballpoint pens. I hear they all sit on an island in the pacific laughing their socks off.
Nope , my theory is that ballpoint pens are the larval form of clothes hangars. It’s the best reason I can come up with to explain why I have closets full of clothes hangars, but never buy any. I can never find a ballpoint pen, but buy them continually.
Great one! Laughed so hard.
Possible explanation for the missing teaspoons https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
Awesome!
That is hysterical! Do you read the bibliography?
That is hysterical! Do you read the bibliography?
LOL the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy lmfao … that is gold!!
On a separate note I am sooooo sooooo sorry Ilona….. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the 4th and tiniest teaspoon.
The first few look like what they do in Australia. I have had a few around over the years that look similar to yours but they always annoyed me because I like to eat my ice-cream with ones the size of the first 3 lol.
Hope the new ones work for you though. thanks for the laughs.
Thank you. At last a scientific study. I had not considered outer space as I was convinced fellow employees were taking and hoarding non plastic teaspoons. My manager refused to authorize GPS. She also would not allow cameras or random locker searches either. Sigh. So I started using petty cash to go buy non plastic teaspoons at dollar store on my way home. Well, they complained about plastic spoons making coffee taste bad and I figured cheap dollar store teaspoons would be MIA soon anyway.
Thanks again, Eva. And yes I did read the bibliography.
(Just sent to the slug lab, with an image of the Tick crying “Spoon!”)
Loved it — priceless.
Wish someone would pay me to do this survey . I would simply skip to the end and send a memo stating, “We will no longer be supply spoons. Period. Full Stop. BRING YOUR OWN! B.Y.O.S.
I keep collapsible wood and titanium chopsticks, a titanium spoon, and a knife or three in my bag. Often a spare spoon. (Which is carefully cleaned after being loaned out. And I know which is which – I don’t like the texture of shape of the bowl of the spare nearly as much.) Okay, and a rolled up silicone tea bowl.
I hate disposable eating implements, and I eat in my office a lot. And I’ve never quite gotten it out of my system that one must have the essential gear on one’s person at all times. (Bah. I wonder if my new lab mates are going to try to steal my flatware and set it on fire? I haven’t had to worry about that for a bit.)
I live the article thanks for sharing- plus the saga of the spoons a great end to finishing Diamond Fire and then getting caught up on catching up on blogs when i should be asleep for work in the morning 🙂
I don’t use teaspoons, don’t take sugar or milk and don’t drink instant coffee so it’s not me.
I don’t use teaspoons, don’t take sugar or milk and don’t drink instant coffee so it’s not me. Love the bibliography.
Hmmm. Soup spoon, soup spoon with shorter handle (I absolutely hate how companies do that. Cheap!) Same spoon in different plating, a *real* teaspoon, and a demi-tasse spoon (for coffee). I feel your pain, and wish you luck getting more of the correct spoons. Can you contact the manufacturer or whoever put out the set? Maybe they’ll sell you dozen.
It irritates the heck out of me that it’s so expensive to buy just spoons. I know perfectly well that my boys tossed them along with their yogurt cups. I accept it. But should it really be more expensive to replace the spoons than to replace the whole darned set?
And yes, I admit, I have an issue with stuff matching, but geeze, gimme a break!
I think the kids throw them away lol. I buy packs of teaspoons at Big Lots usually.
Liberty Tabletop is the only flatware company left in the USA. It makes beautiful flatware and has a sample program. It has been written up in the New York Times. It is very high quality
I had this problem with knives and spoons on a 144 piece set. I googled what I could find written on the forks, looked at pictures that came up and found replacements on eBay. It was nice as I have all 36 of the forks.
I have a theory about missing things. Especially those missing single socks, handkerchiefs, biros, teaspoons, hairpins, hair ties, packets of gum, rolls of sticky tape, that favourite lipstick you can no longer find, single earrings, double adaptors, that new phone cable, those extra batteries you bought etcetc.
I think there is a 5th dimension, and it is accessed by the tiny black hole that moves randomly around your house. It always settles under things or at the back of things like drawers and boxes and washing machines and dryers.
And one day it is going to reverse polarities and vomit every missing sock and biro etc last seen on the planet back through its tiny little sucky mouth from that 5th dimension.
All at once.
I reckon all those missing items will raise the land level by quite a few feet.
…this is how we’re going to combat the sea level rise from global warming?
I laughed when I read this comment, but ya know it could work. lol Try not to be close when everything you have lost come vomiting back. Could hurt. One slipper is still MIA and small spoons have stopped disappearing…peering anxiously around..at least I hope so. Time will tell.
I buy small flashlights 3 or 4 at the time (you know the ones that take 3 AAA batteries) at the Dollar Store. My partner had Alzheimer’s and walked off with them, never to be seen again. Had to stop him from helping me put the groceries away because I could never find anything we bought after.
Now that he is content in long term care, am finding stuff all over the place.
I am still looking for stuff that I put in a “safe” place. never to be seen again. My sister has a “safe” place too. Neither of us has a clue where that place is.
Maybe my stuff/sock/slipper is there. Who knows??
When the Wayfair teaspoons dwindle to a small number, maybe a trip to IKEA will set you up. Just ordinary stainless. The main pattern (Dragon) never gets dropped.
Ah, yes, the mystery of missing teaspoons…ours usually end up being somewhere on the floor behind cabinets and other appliances, have found some forks there as well XD
While the shape/design of them are in all kinds (we’ve got like 4 or 5 kinds of different teaspoons) size of them remains roughly the same, may vary by 2 or 3 millimeters, but that’s it.
They need to add the sizes for teaspoons on amazon ;D
I gave up on matching teaspoons to the rest of my flatware and got a “complementary” pattern at a local discounter. Let’s see how long they take to disappear.
My teenager locks his room from the inside, then uses a fork or spoon to open it. He then leaves it on his dresser. Or down the side of his bed. Or in the bathroom so he doesn’t have to carry it in his pocket. About once a week, my mom flips because there is no flatware. I’ve asked him to use butter knives, as no one uses them, but that hasn’t happened. It is a big problem in our house. I hate teenagers.
FWIW, here’s how we solved the problem of accidentally locked bedroom doors:
1) Disable the doorknob lock or replace the knob with a non-lockable version
2) Install a hook-and-eye (https://www.homedepot.com/s/hook%20and%20eye) on the inside.
That way the daughter could escape from her younger brother but she no longer locked herself out.
Yes ikea as an earlier person posted! I went through what you did too and then happened to find the perfect size at ikea.
Why is it that spoons are migratory and other utensils aren’t? It’s a mystery for the ages.
If you know what pattern your silverware set is, you can usually get individual pieces of just about anything from http://www.replacements.com.
+1
I would add a couple of things about Replacements. They will identify your pattern for you. They can ID it based on pictures and shapes. It is fairly cool. They are expensive, however and the scarcity of the pattern drives up the price. They also have a HUGE warehouse which is open to the public and gives tours. It is fairly magical if you have a fondness for old house hold goods. They also buy flat ware, table ware, and gift ware. Their offering price is, of course, lower than what you could make selling it to the person who’s dog stole your the teaspoons in your grandma’s flatware!
Why is it that spoons are migratory and other utensils aren’t? It’s a mystery for the ages.
If you know what pattern your silverware set is, you can usually get individual pieces of just about anything from http://www.replacements.com.
Thank you for the post, Ilona Andrews. The mystery of the missing teaspoons. It happens everywhere. My demented mother used to blow up a microwave around every 3 months. Metal and microwaves are a NO NO. I learned quickly to buy basic microwave only and plastic teaspoons which i put by microwave just for her use. Then she complained about plastic spoons melting in microwave. So I bought microwave safe teaspoons and she complained not true teaspoons…. too big, too small, too narrow…
So after she went to live with my sister I went to Replacements, Inc in McLeansville NC and replaced all my MIA plates, bowls, eating utensils etc.
On a side note, my sister now has no teaspoons. She is unhappy as that was set given to her when she married. So now I stop by dollar store or Big Lots and take a set of teaspoons with me on my monthly visit to Mother to trim latest dog nails, heartworm medicate dog etc so we can have a properly set table for lunch.
Love Replacements.com. Also Oneida.com. They were able to match my daily stainless (we saved Green Stamps to get the set before our wedding mumble-mumble years ago).
I think you have to look for demitasse spoons. They are about half the size of American teaspoons.Your original set must be European.
The smallest spoon you have in the line up looks to be a salt cellar/sugar bowl spoon.
I may be wrong but you might end up having a problem with the Wayfair set as well. They could be the same size as the other teaspoons you lined up to the left of the screen if they are American made.
You can look through Ebay with more luck, I think. You may even be able to find them on the Ebay UK or France ones. Shipment fees may be a little steep , though.
Good luck with your hunt for teaspoons!
I’m confused as to what a proper teaspoon is. All the ones Ilona posted looked fine to me. Now I’m thinking maybe I’m teaspoon deprived and don’t know it?!
The last one seems to be a coffee spoon. Those ar not seen much nowadays where I live.
At my home it’s the slightly bigger size spoons like those in the photos that have gone missing. I’ve tried to find new ones separately without luck. Of course, I have searched for dessert spoons. Maybe I should try with “tea spoons” 🙂
Daiso has the right size tea spoons! Of course, they call them coffee spoons.
Daiso has the right sized teaspoons! Unfortunately, they call me hem coffee spoons.
Is this your manufacturer? Perhaps they have just the spoons available.
https://www.amazon.com/Silverware-Stainless-Flatware-Utensils-Dishwasher/dp/B07C84RGK3/ref=lp_18105938011_1_1?srs=18105938011&ie=UTF8&qid=1542382098&sr=8-1
Next time try an antique store. I had the same problem. Does someone in your house take yogurt for lunch, take a spoon and don’t replace it? That is what happened. The antiques store sold spoons from incomplete wedding sets. So I had a set of mismatched silver spoons that were beautiful, each one for a dollar.
Same!!! My first apartment, I bought new flatware… 1 year later, half the teaspoons were gone. Also 1 fork and 1 knife, but none of the bigger spoons in the set. It drives me batty. Since then, various people have walked off with my teaspoons (all recovered aka I search my sister at the door) and now they are rationed like the precious commodity I was never expecting them to be.
We can never keep up with our long handled iced teaspoons so I just keep picking up a couple every other month at Walmart. (They really do have nice ones.) But, I recently went outside into the backyard wood shop… I found the missing spoons all over the place! It seems “someone” decided long ago that the iced sweet tea wasn’t quite sweet enough and instead of saying anything, a tall cold glass of sweet tea gets extra sugar before heading out to the shop and of course said y’all glass requires a long handled spoon to stir it to dissolve the extra sugar!? I’m just having a hard time understanding how the glasses make it back inside sans spoons!
I just want to know: how on earth does flatware create a flame war? Who are these people?!
What flamewar?
Tylikcat above is afraid that her lab mates are going to flame the flatware she carries with her. I used to think of scientists as quite serious and single-minded people but that image has been driven out of my head into multifaceted, creative, competitive and a bit chaotic. I expect that to be a scientist you must question everything. I want details.
If you’ll kindly check your timestamps, you’ll notice I brought that up after Jen’s comment!
And it’s not an idle concern! The last time I spent a lot of time around roboticists, one of them (one of the various folks who stayed with us in the Woodinville house for a while, part of the GYRE reduced gravity robotics group at the UW*) kept trying to steal my titanium flatware and set it on fire because “titanium burns a really pretty color!” …these are all folks I knew socially through geek circles, back when I was a biochemist, but academic overlap is a thing.
* aka, how a bunch of undergrads came up with an idea in a bar and ended riding the vomit comet – twice! Many of these folks are still among my close friends.
We also have a problem with teaspoons. The third set of cutlery in 43 years was purchased 7 years ago and fortunately is still available. All the teaspoons have been replaced. I think it is time to order some additional spoons. 1 has gone missing.
What is a black spoon? Not a joke, I really don’t know. Thanks.
Oooh, the rooster looks just like my lovely Gold-Laced Wyandotte (currently cowering in the coop because of the snowfall). Three inches last night, and it’s not even December.
Have you read the Elfhome series by Wen Spencer? There is a character in the 3rd book that loses things. I cannot say more without spoilers.
That is an excellent series!?
Literally laughing out loud. Thank you for the laugh!
Thank you for the link to the lost teaspoon study. Our staff Room has a chronic shortage of teaspoons and forks – I have blamed our students, who come with cutlery requiring food and no cutlery! But perhaps it is that other dimension is way more attractive than the hard life of an aid to caffeine deprived Australians.
Dollar Tree, hon. Or Wal-Mart. Seriously. 4 for a dollar (sometimes less at Wal-Mart.) Best of all, you get to hold it in your hand and decide if it is worthy of your dollar before you buy it. (I am, of necessity, super cheap.)
This is nothing new, but an ongoing problem. I remember my mother going to S. S. Kresge’s to find cheap replacement spoons, about 55 years ago! A few years later, the Kresge chain was renamed K-Mart.
There are teaspoons and “tea” spoons with the long grip ice tea. It boggles the mind!
An Australian scientist did a reasearch paper over a decade ago looking into the phenomena of teaspoons going missing from work break rooms. It’s a hilarious read.
https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498
I think our teaspoons have run away together. I’m missing 5 from a set and every other pattern from that company has the options to purchase singles…except for the set I own (and after pulling a fork from the garbage after my 7 year old fed the cats, I have an idea where my 5 teaspoons went.)
When I was a young kid I saw the guy on TV that claimed he could bend spoons with his mind. At the time I didn’t understand what he was claiming and just thought being able to bend spoons was a big deal. I bent (broke) almost all of our household spoons practicing to prove my greatness.
Hit the thrift store. I get all extra flatware at the thrift as we lose it constantly. It doesn’t match, but if you don’t mind a table setting with character, it’s a great way to go. Re-use and reduce and all that.