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Nia pares down the pantry.
First, she trashcans what’s beyond its expiration date.
Bye-bye sweetened condensed milk.
Next, she combines half-finished duplicates into single containers.
Walnuts… Meet your fellow walnuts.
Finally, she polishes the shelves and replaces the keepers into an accessible format.
It is your responsibility to learn (or unlearn) behaviors that fuel (or hinder) your growth as a person.
Instead of fighting to conquer the world, fight every day to conquer yourself.
edits
😔 Now for a severe case of cook’s remorse. I’m one bound to pack every shelf of our small kitchen, which invariably leads to expired this and that. “It’s not that far out of date,” I’ve been known to say. 🤷🏽 Solution: wish for more shelves!
How does one hope to bake without 6 different Pyrex type baking dishes?! (I can explain...) Or make the perfect flourless chocolate cake without a spring form pan! Two sizes of muffin pans, 2 of each size. Cooking with the “Right Stuff” is as important as eating!
Working on myself🤔🤔 At 74 saying I’m a work in progress may seem a bit overly hopeful. Then again, today - just this day and moment - is what I have to work with. I kid Beth about my needing to write cabinet contents on the doors to save search time. But I can search contents before heading to the store to avoid out of date canned milk.
In the final analysis, it’s my brain that could benefit more from a good house cleaning and polishing of shelves. Tackling procrastination frees up energy and results in accomplishment. Mentally, “I’m a getter-doner” has a better ring to it than “I’m a procrastinator.”
Now where did I put that blending stick? 😬
I'm sure you already know, but before somebody else mentions it... a lot of times the "expiration date" is a "best when sold by" date, and "best" is entirely at the whim of the manufacturer. (I got schooled on this by a friend who worked for Nabisco, but I've seen similar things elsewhere.) So whether to pitch something has to be evaluated for each kind of item.
So (for example) a can of black beans will probably be fully edible six months after the expiration date, and maybe longer if (like me) you will dump it in with chicken and salsa to make chili, so you won't be able to appreciate the full-bodied black bean flavor in any case.
Some items (my friend used dog biscuits as her example) never actually go bad, if left unopened. But they have "Sell by" dates because if left on the shelves too long they get dusty, so nobody buys them anyway.
OTOH, if something is open and in the fridge, the stamped date can indicate whether, perhaps, the item just needs to be chucked. Or at least examined for fuzzy spontaneous flavor additions.
Nia's pantry organization, btw, gets hearty applause! 👏