Caught myself spending 20 minutes scrolling my cabinets before realizing I have too many spices

My sister called me out on it last Tuesday. She said if I can't find cumin in under 10 seconds I need to toss the old stuff. I pulled out 5 jars of paprika with different dates. Three of them were from 2021. Now I'm only keeping what I'll use in 6 months and it feels way better. Anyone else holding onto expired spice blends?

3 comments

3 Comments

williams.sage27d ago

5 jars of paprika with different dates" lmao I feel personally attacked right now. I legit found a jar of pumpkin pie spice in my cabinet from 2019 that I swear I only bought because it looked cute on the shelf. Took a sniff test and it smelled like dusty nothing so I finally tossed it. My spice drawer is basically a museum of abandoned baking projects at this point lol.

kimr7427d ago

Notice how nobody ever thinks they'll be the one with a spice museum until they're staring at five bottles of cayenne wondering when they became a hoarder. @williams.sage you gotta ask yourself though, how many times have you bought a new spice just because you couldn't find the old one hidden behind the bay leaves? Isn't that the real crime here, buying duplicates of stuff you already own while the originals sit there silently judging you?

piper_kim27d ago

oh man, the sniff test has betrayed me more times than i care to admit. what actually helped me was getting those little airtight glass jars with the swing tops, like the ones from ikea. i dumped all my random spice packets into those and wrote the date i bought them with a sharpie on the bottom. now i can actually see what i have without digging through a pile of sad cardboard. and if something's older than two years, i just toss it without thinking twice. it's way easier to keep track now.