I started working at another location a few months ago. I took it upon myself to clean out the break room fridge as it was overflowing with stuff. Lots of moldy and expired stuff. The oldest was a piece of individually packaged string cheese with an expiration date of 2007. I threw out all the other stuff but kept the string cheese in the butter compartment as a memento.
It this case part of the problem was that job site has a huge employee turnover rate and people just forgot their lunches.
If I had unopened food stuff from the 50s, I’d be doing my homework to see if any of that stuff is worth anything.
I mean, I doubt you’d find a goldmine in there but even if you could score 50 bucks on Ebay, it would make the whole venture worthwhile.
Nitpicky, for sure, but milk is dated with the year as is most meat. Meat usually has a sell or freeze by date that includes the year.
About the only thing that really gets ancient in our house is condiments and condiment-like ingredients with long shelf lives. Stuff like certain kinds of vinegars and hot sauces that aren’t everyday type things.
So we’ll forget about them and on one of the periodic pantry cleanouts, we’ll find a bottle of say… champagne vinegar that we won’t have used in 6 months. “Hmm… probably not bad yet.” And back in it goes. Repeat, until someone notices that it looks like soy sauce instead of being relatively light in color.
Our fridges and freezers get enough turnover that nothing’s super-old in them. Well, except for the things that don’t really go bad. I think there’s some special Mangalitsa hog bacon in one of the freezers that’s a couple of years old, but it’s a) vacuum-packed, and b) been frozen the entire time. I doubt there’s a problem with it.
Hey, it’s paid for.
When we bought this house, the previous owners left a garage fridge with stuff in it as well as stuff in cabinets. We’re talking Coors Light with a freshness date of 1997 (we bought the house in 2004.) There were spices and packaged dry foods (think instant oatmeal) that were at least 5 years past their use-by dates. In the garage fridge, one of the crisper drawers was FULL of condiment packets from fast food places - ketchup, duck sauce, taco sauce, mayo. Everything got tossed.
These folks were odd about dates, too. The trash cans were dated. So were the snow shovels. And a radio. And the washer. I guess it was more important to know when something was acquired rather than when it should be gone.
That was my first thought when I read this thread. There are firms over here in the UK that specialize in old products and packaging for use in films and TV series and an army of eagle-eyed watchers quick to point out any anachronisms. Yes, you Heartbeat fans…
Like you say, unlikely to be worth a fortune, but might be worth your time and after all they are (though recent) historical artifacts.
Plus, while watching a film you might get to say “See that tin of peas in the background? It used to belong to my mum!”
Back in the 60s, before Bugles came out on the market, a marketing research company conducted a taste test in my grandmother’s town. Each resident was delivered an enormous box with multiple boxes of 3 different snack items they were testing. You were supposed to eat them, then fill out an opinion card and mail it back to the company. We grand kids gave them a go, naturally, and grandma helped us fill out the opinion card and mail it back. End of story, you’d have supposed.
But no. In 1988 when one of my cousins and I went through my grandmother’s house prior to putting it up for sale, we found a big, opened, box in the basement with several remaining boxes of Bugles, Whistles and Daisies. We have no idea why they were saved, as my grandmother clearly never ate any of them, nor planned to. We also found an unopened carton of root beer Fizzies tablets in the root cellar. None of we cousins could remember seeing those, but they may also have been a test marketing giveaway that our parents didn’t think we should have.
Grandmother’s house has been cleared out three times - when she moved from the farm, when her home had to be moved and replaced with a modular home due to safety/structural issues, and finally, when she moved permanently to a nursing facility. Each time, we found “food artifacts.” Spices that had been bought in the fifties or sixties, or a pork chop that had been in the freezer since the Nixon administration, or a can full of green beans and botulism, with a use by date a decade ago.
Part of it, in her case, was definitely the fact that she was a child of the Depression. But honestly? A larger part was that Grandmother is used to being waited upon. After Granddaddy was no longer around to manage that sort of thing, Grandmother let a lot of the housekeeping go to hell. The house always looked okay, but everything under the surface was slovenly. Clearing out the pantry or defrosting the freezer was someone else’s job, and she certainly wasn’t going to trust someone else to decide which of HER things Grandmother should no longer have. But that’s probably just my gigantic control freak psycho grandmother…
You mean you’re one of the focus group twerps that foisted Bugles off on an unsuspecting nation? Shame, girl, SHAME on you! 
I haven’t heard about Whistles, Daisies, or Fizzies since the 60s. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
Bugles yet live, although I can’t imagine why. I think they and cockroaches will be the only organic things left on Earth after the Nuclear winter. And even cockroaches can’t get nutrition from eating Bugles, so eventually Bugles will be all that remains on an otherwise barren and lifeless planet.
The 50s?! You should be calling around to local museums. I’m kidding, but only just. If someone offered me a box of crackers from the 50s, I’d take it out of pure curiosity. Although I’d rather the box be empty . . .
After a certain point, any thing that sits in one place constantly will be perceived as being “where it belongs” - like the paint on the wall - when I look in the pantry, I expect to see the bag of corn meal - it is where it belongs.
That it is a perishable kinda gets lost
I may still have a jug of molasses bought 15 years ago.
I suspect half of the cake/muffin/brownie mixes are past due.
I will only accept part of the blame. I voted for the Whistles. At age 7, I liked putting one of those cheesy tubes on each finger and nibbling on them as I went about my business. Tres elegant. :o
And you survived, and here to write about it! Phew!
Why do people keep decades-old food?
Tomatoes and soup do go bad in the can.
I used to be really cheap and buy stuff that was just on the edge of ‘best by’ sell dates. I figure it would have 6 months, maybe a year left.
Okay, 3 months later good. 3 months 1 day later bad. It was edible–as in it wouldn’t kill me, but nasty in taste. Apparently in high acid items, that best by sell by date really means something.
Now I just buy enough canned goods for a couple of weeks. No more buying by the case!
Yes, tomatoes and sauerkraut will eat through the can lining and spoil. If you’re really unlucky, it will leak onto the shelf. So will soda cans.
Ditto on the packaging possibly being valuable. No barcode? Probably older than 1976. No Nutrition Facts panel? Older than 1991.
And there are some odd folks that collect cereal boxes.
Oh man :eek:
I just wanted to revisit this with another reason older people don’t clean out their kitchen cabinets; it’s hard. Even in my 60’s if I’m in the house alone I think twice to get up on a step stool to clean out the cabinets or change a light bulb. Also, older people have hip and knee issues. I don’t blame them for not cleaning that top cabinet.
If they have difficulty reaching that top cabinet why do they have anything up there?