house. The forks get used WAY more often than other utensils. If I do the math, there are 4 of us in the house, and if we use on average two forks per day each, we're talking about 2920 fork uses per year. If .001 percent of the time a fork is used it accidentally gets thrown out, and 99.9 percent of the time it isn't thrown out, that comes out to around 3 forks per year.

Based on that every couple years we need to buy new forks. I know I've personally seen forks in the trash twice over the last few years, and I stopped myself from throwing one away once as well. It's the only possible explanation.