On Friday I did my weekly food shop. To redeem a £2.25 money off voucher I ended up spending £20, forcing myself to buy enough juice, milk, bread etc. to keep me going until the next millennia. Single handedly lugging this weight back home I was winning at life but losing at the will to live it.

Once back I faced a new, equally crushing, task. I now had to find somewhere to put all this food. My attitude to unpacking shopping is usually to stuff it anywhere there is space. If I manage to put the correct food in the fridge/cupboard then it’s a bonus. However the draw back of this laid back attitude is a cupboard space full of, well, rubbish which in a house share environment with limited personal space isn’t really the most practical way to store food. After a long period of time trying to find a way around the problem I decided the only way to tackle the issue was to have a full on clear out.

Very quickly I realised I had accumulated a lot of random items over the past year. That or items severely damaged from the the random items. For example, this ‘good luck in your new house/job’ bag of fudge given to me last year…

Due to high temperatures and other items the individual pieces of fudge had become a super block of fudge, so flat my cup could sit comfortably on it:

There were the compulsory random assortment of mugs deep in my cupboard that I’d completely forgotten about:

There was also half a packet of Bachelor’s pasta, from where I’d clearly tried it but given up:

I’m not a student any more, I can afford better.

There was some random rubbish in there:

(The bin is literally two steps away, yet I made the effort to reach up and put the rubbish in the cupboard. Why would I do that?!)

Also had a container with a small amount of squash in it (I had just bought back a vat of the same flavour. Must be destiny!)

Start digging further back though and things get weird.

There’s a battery:

A piece of random string:

There was also a carton(?) of UHT milk:

I guess I’ll never experience the “tastes like fresh milk” feeling. It was the first item to be binned.

The carrots which have been in there so long they’ve attempted to grow but then died:

I’m assuming this is tea, but then it’s not in my tea tin with the regular, circular, tea bags.

Who knows what could be in it…

It made me think of this clip from the Inbetweeners:

Come on though, this is me here. It’s tea.

*Bing, bonk* “Sugar leakage in cupboard three!”

Ooooh hello, some decent coffee. I actually could do with this!

Better see how many months I’ve got left to use up…

Oh.

There was some powder mix stuff in there that I’m sure dates back from my student days:

Still, at least that was in date.

There was also some cause for concern items in there. Notably the very close proximity of my vegetable sock cubes and the descaler tablets for my coffee machine.

(They were very quickly separated).

Three broken/badly damaged lunch bags? Check.

Every cupboard has that tin of tomato soup that everyone has but never actually wants to consume. You know, the one that would sell better in supermarkets if it skipped the bull and said “consume when sick: Eat when taste and quality are your lowest priorities.”

There is a happy end to all this though. No clear out would be complete without finding that gift card someone gave you at Christmas where you don’t know if it’s value is £0 or £1,000,000,000:

Knowing me it’ll probably be the former. A girl can dream.

So clear out complete and items reorganised I was able to fit the old rubbish food with the new. All categorised based on usage frequency and what time of the day they get used (breakfast, baking, dinner)*. Everything fitted in perfectly for once.

*Except the pittas. They are a category by themselves for some reason.

Now as long as I don’t accumulate any large or awkward items I’ll be fine…

For Christ’s sake.