Are Your Spices Out of Date?
A short time ago, I was cleaning out my spice rack, checking the dates to be sure everything was still good. While dried spices don’t necessarily become dangerous after their use-by dates, they do deteriorate in flavor, so I like to make sure the contents of my spice cabinet are within the date suggested. Things were going well, until I found it.
A container of cornstarch that was ten years past the expiration date.
That’s a little far even for me.
When I thought back a little, I realized I had had this container of cornstarch since the beginning of my marriage. I had moved with it three separate times. I had had other cornstarch packages come and go, all while this one sat at the back of the shelf, years past its expiration.
It started me thinking about two things.
First, what other areas of my life am I neglecting? Am I using up and replacing hobbies and friends while old ones languish in the background? Are there things I’m keeping around because it might have value someday even though I know it doesn’t belong in my life anymore?
And secondly, holy COW I obviously need to clean out my spices more often.
The truth is, we all have those things that clutter up our lives but that we aren’t yet ready to release, hoping we’ll come back to them someday. Whether it’s an old friend who isn’t really someone you want to be friends with anymore but you’re keeping them on Facebook because you feel guilty unfriending them or a long-outdated calendar gifted to you by someone you love that you never used, it’s hard to let go of things we wanted to turn out differently. Admitting that it’s time to move on means admitting that we weren’t the person who did that, used that, grew that way. Sometimes it means admitting that others weren’t either, and that can be really hard.
But until we’re honest with ourselves and clear the expired gunk out of our lives, we’re going to be shoving other things around to make room for dead ends. I don’t want my pantry to be filled with dead ends. I want my pantry to be full of delicious ingredients I can use to make wonderful food for myself and my family. I want my life to have room for all the delightful new growth I want to create, and to do that, I will have to let some old things go.
Do you have old things you need to let go of? The transition from summer to fall is a wonderful time to go through those things and decide which ones you want to take into the rest of the year. What do you want to have cleared out by the new year? It’s right around the corner.
And oh yeah, clear out your spice cabinet. Stuff lurks in there, I think.