I have re-organized my kitchen and pantry, and found lots of foodstuff that is still good, they’d just migrated out of sight or got separated from the rest of the herd, so I thought I was out of them (except for number #6 - see below). I will not have to buy any of these for a long time:
[ul]
[li] Paper towels (9 rolls)[/li][li] Alfredo sauce (various flavors - 6 jars)[/li][li] Tuna in water (12 cans)[/li][li] 75 watt light bulbs (4 2-packs – I have two sockets that use max 75 watts)[/li][li] Boxes of garbage bags (4 lawn & leaf; 3 tall white kitchen bags)[/li][li] Rice (dingding!) -A-Roni The San Francisco Treat (18 boxes - they were on very good sale, and I was SWT**!)[/li][li] Grated Parmesan cheese (3 bottles)[/li][li] Sweet Bread-n-Butter pickles (4 large jars)[/li][li] Catsup (3 unopened bottles)[/li][li] Polaner All-Fruit Not Jelly (5 jars - only have 1 jar of peanut butter at the moment)[/li][/ul]
(I’m not even including the excess office supplies from when I organized a few weeks ago - those are heading to various teachers I know who would appreciate them a lot.)
I don’t shop at one of the bulk food places: this is just one of those, ‘damn, do I have this already or don’t I and do I really want to make another trip to the store?’ decisions. I think I shall now carry two shopping lists: one of what I desperately need, and one of THINGS I SHALL NOT BUY NO MATTER HOW GOOD OF A BARGAIN THEY ARE BECAUSEI HAVE TOO FREAKIN’ MANY IN THE PANTRY AS IT IS!!!
Just curious: what’s on YOUR “don’t need” list? Anything you want to trade?
For a while there I always remembered that we were out of kleenex, but never remembered that I had bought them last week. Plus, Mr. Athena moved some of 'em to a different spot, so when I did remember to go look and see if I had bought them last week, the place where I keep the spare boxes was empty. So we now have a whole pile of kleenex.
You could use the tuna, Rice-a-Roni, alfredo sauce and cheese to make a casserole, and then use a trash bag to get rid of the resulting disgusting mess!
Actually Otto, that sounds like the cooking I was used to before I learned how to cook for myself (who am I kidding - I STILL cannot cook well!). (former)Roommate used to make “Pantry Surprise”: kick the door of the pantry and the first six (edible) items that fell out went into the Dutch oven for (multiple days) dinner. Example: Macaroni & cheese with tuna, kidney beans, corn, green beans, taco seasoning, with a bit of grated parmesan cheese for taste (he caught the can of mushrooms before they hit the floor - he hated mushrooms, but I love them - personally, I think they would have added to the melange).
Waiting in my linen closet, I have two full-size tubes of toothpaste, six toothbrushes, three packages of dental floss, three sticks of deoderant, five bars of soap, four bottles of acidophilus capsules, two of Mr. Clean, and a whole spare box of Swiffer WetJet pads. I feel sooooo incredibly safe.
Yeah, I’ve done the five-can casserole a few times myself. I still do the occassional faked-up casserole along those lines and while I’m sure it has zero nutritional value, depending on the size of the cans, I can get a few days’ worth of meals out of it.
Suffice it to say that when WWIII breaks out, you all should begin making your way to my house where you will be able to survive indefinitely without ever going outside. That includes toilettries.
I really should check before I make a grocery list!!
We have enough paper towels to last us months. That’s on purpose, though. We buy 'em in big old packs from Target. It’s kind of a bad thing, though, because then we forget that the paper towels are not a self-renewing resource. “Run out of paper towels? Ha! We will NEVER run out of paper towels! We have paper towels enough for the entire population of The Netherlands - TWICE! Our paper towels are PERPETUAL!” And then we actually do get down to the last roll, and it is like the Apocalypse. “There are no paper towels! The paper towels are gone! THIS CANNOT BE!!!”
I’m always buying margarine. “Do I have enough butter? I’m not sure, and I don’t want to get halfway through some cookies or a pot of macaroni and cheese or something and not have enough. I’d better get a pound.” Then I get home and realize I’ve done the same thing every time I went to the store for three months. Luckily margarine lasts a good long time if refrigerated properly.
At the moment, I have eighteen cans of green beans, twelve cans of corn, 4 cans of asparagus, 15 cans of crushed tomatos, 18 frozen buttefly pork chops, two six pound roasts, two frozen briskets and about eight pounds of ground beef. I also have 24 rolls of paper towels and 36 rolls of toilet paper. Not to mention five tubes of toothpaste, eight spare tooth brushes, 2 gallons of milk, 48 cans of diet Pepsi, 22 bottles of GatorAde, and 24 cans of Coke Classic. I will go shopping again in the next few days, although I don’t know what I will buy.
Did you know you can return things to the grocery store if you haven’t opened them? I bought sage two weeks in a row because I remembered I’d run out, but forgot I was on top of the situation.
Okay, I gather we’re excluding things we bought in full knowlege of how many we’d have when we were done? (I’m thinking of the six boxes of tampons I bought when they were really, really on sale.)
My worst is canned, diced tomatoes – good for throwing in to soup, chili, spaghetti sauce, casseroles, pantry suprise, etc. Seven cans at last count – I’d prefer not to go see whether it’s higher or lower at this particular moment.
It’s bathroom stuff that does me in. I can’t get through Costco without “forgetting” that I already have 7 sticks of deoderant and 12 bars of soap at home already. I have enough Worchestershire Sauce for a thousand Bloody Marys. I’m assuming that my hot sauce collection doesn’t count?
Oh, and pepper. I some always think that in the event of nuclear war, I will be able to trade spices for things. Comes from being a History teacher I guess.
Hmmmm… maybe we can actually make some progress with this thread. I’ve FORGOTTEN to buy dental floss the last 4 times I went to the store. You wouldn’t by any chance need some kleenex, would you? We could arrange a trade!
I never ever need to buy soap again. I have bar soap, big lumps of soap that are supposed to look like rocks, liquid soap, gel soap… do I need to go on? And yet every time I go to the drug store I look at the soaps. It’s some sort of fetish.
-Lil
Mustard. I don’t know why I always think we have no mustard. And then I don’t see it in the fridge, so I open it and it has to stay in the fridge. I have some sort of congenital mustard blindness, I guess.
I sort of envy you guys. I live in a tiny studio apartment with almost zero storage space. Right now, there are three rolls of paper towels living under my table because there’s nowhere else to put them. They have a box of tall kitchen bags for company. My Dad likes to visit my sister when she’s working at Costco and he winds up keeping the three of us well supplied with such things. Usually I have several boxes of Kleenex because of him too but I finally actually ran out.
I was digging through my cupboard and found two cans of Mandarin oranges in the back. I ate one yesterday and one today. There’s still a couple of cans of black olives back there, a can of salmon, a couple cans of soup that I don’t particularly like (I know: Why did I buy them?), a box of Bisquick that must be close to expiring, two cans of pineapple, a can of cranberry/apple stuff from a muffin mix, ditto a packet of poppy seeds, blueberry muffin mix, the obliglatory box of Rice-a-Roni and…a can of almond paste from when I got into a baking frenzy several years ago.
Hehehe. Growing up, my mother would always buy margarine when it was on sale, which was every other week, it seemed. And she wouldn’t buy one box, oh no. It was always at LEAST three, usually four. Well, three to four pounds of margerine every two or three weeks has a tendency to build up, after a while (even though EVERYTHING’S better with Blue Bonnet on it). Luckily, we had the deep freeze in the basement, which can hold a LOT of margerine, in addition to the fish, wildlife, and garden veggies that would rotate in and out every year. Well, with three of four kids out of the house, and my stepfather passing away, there isn’t as much need for margarine as there was, so she can dig into the stock. I think she is just now finishing out the stuff from the first Bush administration.
Having grown up in an area where people took winter seriously, I am accustomed to having large amounts of…everything on hand. Unfortunately, my wife is the same way, and that CostCo membership is pretty darn cheap. Oh well, we save money at their gas pumps, anyway.
The following items are always purchased in excess:
Taco Sauce - I currently have an open container in the fridge and 4 unopened in the pantry
Mayo - 3 jars and counting
Kleenex - always 3 boxes around
Pasta - of various varieties
This is countered by the items I always forget i need ALWAYS - this ends up with a second trip to the store:
Tomato paste
Butter
Paper Towels
Deodorant
Then there are the feast or famine items… either I run out, or I have so many items people think I am starting to stockpile for the revolution:
TP
Bottled Water
Microwave popcorn
