At the beginning of 2008, I decided that I had had enough of the clutter in my house. It was actually affecting my ability to get anything done. The piles of notebooks, books, magazines, clothes, ETC., were driving me mad. LAW, Wifeunit and Cassandra can attest to the fact that I have alot of crap. I do.
My goal for 2008 is to get organized. I mean really, really GET ORGANIZED!!!! I don't have an upcoming move to force me to declutter so I have to find it within myself to get it done.
So yesterday, I cleaned out my pantry.
Let me just start off by saying that I had no idea Jello had an expiration date. I mean...c'mon...it's Jello for crying out loud. Turns out it does expire at a certain point and I am two years late in making all of those wonderful recipes they were purchased for.
I like to shop at Trader Joe's occasionally but I am aware of the dangers of doing that. Trader Joe's has so many really cool, exotic food items. Alas, I never did find a good use for for the jar of caper berries that looked so tempting on the shelf. In retrospect, they were just a little too big. They made me kind of nervous.
Moving on...I have no idea why I have a jar of Mango chutney but I do. Well, I did until I threw it out yesterday. If it's THAT dusty on top, I didn't need it. Oh, and the cans of foie gras that Lancelot brought back from a trip to Paris...gulp...two years ago? Ummm....gone too because they also have an expiration date and I did not feel like playing Johnny Vegas with THAT stuff.
All of this reminded me that I come by it naturally. When my grandfather, Beep Beep (he used to come home from work and say,"beep-beep" and it just kind of stuck) died, there were two very old jars of mincemeat (ewwwww!!!) and a can of boiled grean peanuts (triple ewwww) that somehow made it over to my parents' house. Now, my mother made mincemeat pies with the two jars. That stuff had been fermenting for so long, people got tipsy just from the smell. But that can of boiled green peanuts just sat on their pantry shelf until one day, it exploded. Let me tell you, if the thought of boiled green peanuts makes you...well...a little green, you have no idea what the smell of ROTTEN boiled green peanuts is like. There are just no words.
So now I'm in a pitched battle to take control of the house and my gene pool is not on my side...
