provideritis
In our house we have....a problem. It's a problem related to what my ex-wife called provideritis, an affliction thatseems especially prevalent in the masculinely gendered but is by no means our exclusive province, and which somehow acts upon the sufferer to, among other things, purchase large quantities of foodstuffs. Some of these are things upon which we intend to "stock up" and some are things we simply imagine our spouse would like, or that we want to have handy for a rainy day, or some other thing which we in our fevered imaginations concoct.
In its most harmless form, this results in cases of chickpeas and bottled water, bales of toilet paper, and stacks of brand-new, slightly irregular towels. While I recognize that even this mild symptomology is offensive to some people, for most it's annoying at best, at least until the bulwarks of laid-in dry goods threaten to overwhelm the laundry room and collapse the shelving.
But here, we are suffering from a more difficult form, that of the Island of Broken Foods phenomenon. Things no one ever ate, despite them being procured to tempt them, which are now really no longer good to eat but nonetheless still sealed in their (oh, fuck) recyclable packaging. There are bins of the best and deliciousest ice cream with three freezerburned spoonfuls left, looking forlorn but somehow representing the promise of something good, likewise in a recyclable container. There are things no one ever liked, things no one liked much the first time, and things far more expensive than they should have been and therefore somehow not throw-outable by either of us.
If we were not having this problem, we could - for example - have room for the lovely fig jam panjianlien gifted us with. And the two giant pots of fresh tomato sauce which will eventually be jarred and are the current undertaking of my Secret Agent Lover Man as I write this. We could have a better organized freezer, a more easily managed basket of treats, and someone would eventually get to the bottom of the teetering towering stack of bags of nuts that somehow never gets finished despite my steadfast promise that I would never ever buy another nut again, ever.
Bags are a problem. I like things that come in, or can be decanted into, jars and boxes better. Bags are so slippyslidey.
I know, deep down, that I am simply going to have to get a garbage bag and go through the house and rescue all the spoiled foods and all the last-dead-bits and all of their containers and then go and throw them in a dumpster somewhere to avoid having to even have them in the garage as they...come to room temperature. But this time, this time, I will be smarter. I will never again buy a million things we'll never eat. I will always decant things into jars and boxes, and always some other things and never some other other things. Oh, yes I surely will.
The worst part? Now I'm hungry. And while we seem to have something like a hundred million bags of dried fruit that's gone all funny-coloured and congealed into a single menacing lump, there's not one plain cracker in the house.
::sigh::
In its most harmless form, this results in cases of chickpeas and bottled water, bales of toilet paper, and stacks of brand-new, slightly irregular towels. While I recognize that even this mild symptomology is offensive to some people, for most it's annoying at best, at least until the bulwarks of laid-in dry goods threaten to overwhelm the laundry room and collapse the shelving.
But here, we are suffering from a more difficult form, that of the Island of Broken Foods phenomenon. Things no one ever ate, despite them being procured to tempt them, which are now really no longer good to eat but nonetheless still sealed in their (oh, fuck) recyclable packaging. There are bins of the best and deliciousest ice cream with three freezerburned spoonfuls left, looking forlorn but somehow representing the promise of something good, likewise in a recyclable container. There are things no one ever liked, things no one liked much the first time, and things far more expensive than they should have been and therefore somehow not throw-outable by either of us.
If we were not having this problem, we could - for example - have room for the lovely fig jam panjianlien gifted us with. And the two giant pots of fresh tomato sauce which will eventually be jarred and are the current undertaking of my Secret Agent Lover Man as I write this. We could have a better organized freezer, a more easily managed basket of treats, and someone would eventually get to the bottom of the teetering towering stack of bags of nuts that somehow never gets finished despite my steadfast promise that I would never ever buy another nut again, ever.
Bags are a problem. I like things that come in, or can be decanted into, jars and boxes better. Bags are so slippyslidey.
I know, deep down, that I am simply going to have to get a garbage bag and go through the house and rescue all the spoiled foods and all the last-dead-bits and all of their containers and then go and throw them in a dumpster somewhere to avoid having to even have them in the garage as they...come to room temperature. But this time, this time, I will be smarter. I will never again buy a million things we'll never eat. I will always decant things into jars and boxes, and always some other things and never some other other things. Oh, yes I surely will.
The worst part? Now I'm hungry. And while we seem to have something like a hundred million bags of dried fruit that's gone all funny-coloured and congealed into a single menacing lump, there's not one plain cracker in the house.
::sigh::