Stuck in

Life&Style.

Old spice, and not in that man-on-a-horse kind of way

 

By Laurel Borrowman
Life & Style Editor

I have way too much stuff. You
probably do too. Stuck in Purge-atory
is a weekly chronicle of the quest by
my roommate Emily and I to get rid

of extraneous excess in our lives by
giving away or throwing out one thing
everyday until the end of time.

Warning: This gets a bit gross.

last entry in Purge-atory. If

you noticed, I apologize, and
assure you I’m back on the wagon.
If you didn’t, I don’t apologize,
and assure you I’m back on the
wagon. Either way, it’s for the best
because a key component in this
week’s purge was the passing of
time. A significant amount of it. The
weird thing is that when it comes
to this week’s items—dated edible
things—time passes without me
noticing. Case in point: this week.

Several weeks ago, I opened the

fridge, hungry. I opened a drawer,
peeked behind the peanut butter,
and shuffled the various containers
(an assortment of glass jars) around,
hoping to find something to eat.
I come across a two-week-ish old
tofu stir-fry. Grossed out by the

| t’s been a few weeks since my

slight film forming inside, I noted
quickly that the jar is airtight and
any smell is under wraps. I decided
against eating, didn’t dispose of it,
and put the jar back in the fridge.
I repeat this routine a few times
every week until...

This week! I cleaned out
both the fridge and the spice
cupboard, and it was disgusting.
My reasons for tackling these were
two fold. The first is clear. My
aforementioned trip to the fridge
became all too normal, and there
was more old gross food sealed
neatly in jars than anything edible.
The second? We started to get grain
moths (an accurate moniker; simply
moths that feed on grains). Granted,
our abode is an old apartment
and I think the age automatically
exacerbates anything gross (or
maybe that’s my excuse), but I don’t
think we're getting grain moths
only because it’s old. It’s because
there are expired, stale things in the
cupboard that should be thrown
out. The spice cupboard held loose
tea and bagged tea and jarred spices
that I can’t even recall getting.
There were spices that have moved
with me three or more times. By
my math, that means over four
years, and that means that those are
old spices. And not the kind with

the dreamy guy ona horse with a
handful of diamonds for me.

I know this paints a picture
of our apartment looking like a
torn-apart frat house. I assure you
it isn’t. But it’s pretty nasty how
much food can accumulate simply
because it hasn’t visibly gone bad,
just stale. Think about it though;
if your fridge or cupboards are
housing something older than three
years, do you really want to ingest
that thing? Would you let a guest in
your home eat it (without it being a
dare)?

I sure as heck did not.

Here’s the list of things I
flushed, dumped, and chucked
from the fridge and the spice
cupboard this week, along with the
estimated age and colour alteration,
if any. The measurements on the
fridge inventory refer to the height
in the jar that the science project
occupied, just to give you an (extra
gross) idea of how much I was
getting rid of.

Fridge (all items contained in
sealed glass jars):

2 cm of white beans, five weeks
old, quite filmy

1 cm of tofu stir-fry, two weeks
old, as normal looking as tofu
stir-fry can ever look

3 cm of tomato chutney, five
months old

3 cm of quinoa salad, two
weeks old

6 chilli peppers, unknown
number of months old, quite
fuzzy

3 cm black beans, at least two
months old, borderline grey
3.cm creamed corn, over 10
months old, top half is pink

Old Spice cupboard (mostly a
reorganization project):

5 shakers of various archaic
spices

1 large Ziplock bag of mixed
bulk spices, flavours unknown
2 bottles of rice vinegar

1 small bottle of imitation
vanilla extract (because for
some reason we have three
large bottles of real vanilla)

Days in Purge-atory (not including
hiatus): 93

Items purged this week: 10ish,

and a confident thwarting of food
poisoning

Items that didn’t actually leave the
apartment (mostly went down the
toilet): 0

Total items purged this week: 10ish
Total items purged to date: 309