Progress Report on Sauce Packet Collection
There are forty-seven sauce packets in the third drawer. Some are from restaurants that no longer deliver. All of them were saved because throwing away usable sauce felt wrong.
Progress report: sauce packet collection. Period under review: sixteen months. Status: growing.
Current Inventory
Nineteen ketchup packets. Eleven mint chutney sachets, refrigerated, from three different delivery orders. Four soy sauce packets from the Thai restaurant that closed in October. Three hot sauce packets from a quick-service chain. Two sweet chili sauces from a delivery that arrived nine months ago. Eight packets of undetermined contents, acquired at various points.
Total: forty-seven packets. Packets used since last report: zero. New packets acquired in the reporting period: twelve.
Method of Acquisition
All packets arrived with food that was ordered. They were included by the restaurant as a courtesy or through a default packing process. None were specifically requested. Each was placed in the drawer rather than discarded because throwing away a usable condiment felt, in the moment, like an unreasonable decision.
The moment passed. The packet remained. The collection grew through this mechanism.
Usage Analysis
The most likely conditions for use are: a meal at home that would benefit from sauce, a shortage of the sauce that would normally be used, and awareness that the packet collection exists and contains the relevant sauce. These three conditions have not been met simultaneously in sixteen months.
The ketchup packets are the most likely to be used. They have not been used because there is a bottle of ketchup in the refrigerator.
Projections
At the current acquisition rate of approximately one packet per week, the collection will reach sixty packets in the next three months. Storage capacity in the third drawer will become a factor at approximately seventy packets, at which point a review will be conducted.
The review will result in the removal of the packets from the closed Thai restaurant. All other packets will be retained on the grounds that they remain usable.
The collection will reach seventy packets.