Catastrophic Failure.

There I was, minding my own business, when there arose a clatter of something heavy falling over in my garage.   I figured that maybe someone had let the kitten into the garage, and after a few seconds, I went to go see what chaos she had created. 

But, the damage wasn't the kittens fault...it appears to be time, and gravity...and an unexpected failure.

Yeah...the plastic lid on my gamma-seal totally failed. Like a lot of folks, we use plastic buckets and easy to close gamma-lids to store stuff we want to stay fresh.  Also like a lot of folks on the internet, we stack our buckets, usually 3, maybe 4 high.  I don't load my buckets to failure...there isn't one of them that has a whole 50-pound bag of rice or beans in.  Truthfully, most of them are in the 20-25 pound range, and so, I didn't think I was stressing the system to the point of failure.

It is summer now, and the buckets are in the garage, where temperatures fluctuate, increasing fatigue on the lid.  I guess I might need to look at placing a layer of plywood/MDF in-between layer my buckets to spread the load more evenly.