Cleansing vs. Cleaning

I have a number of facebook friends who, on this New Year's Day of 2012, are proposing cleanses, lifestyle changes, resolutions and the like. I applaud them! I really do, I really hope they can make positive changes in their lives if that is what they are inclined to do. And if I were a different, more motivated kind of person, I too might take this opportunity to make some kind
of statement of intention to make positive changes in my own life. Only I know myself too well.

I once did the stereotypical join-a-gym-in-the-new-year thing. I signed up, bought running shoes and loaded up my mp3 player, and gamely went to work with a gym bag of dopey clothes and good intentions. I think I lasted 3 weeks. My problem wasn't that I didn't enjoy it (ok I found it boring as shit to tell you the truth, I think there's nothing at all interesting about staying in one
place trying to move constantly), but that I hated my gym clothes and felt phony. Every time I put them on I thought "I have the ugliest old gym clothes in this place" but I was unwilling to invest any more money in the venture, and I felt like a fraud in anything more jazzy/lululemony. I am not an athletic person and I do not feel comfortable dressing like one.

So I found various reasons to quit. I'm not sure what my exact justification was.

And I often come across lists (because I like to make lists, and I have books of them) of foods that I at one time or another pledged to eat or not to eat FROM NOW ON. None of these lists were adhered to. I have similarly found lists of budgets that I should stick to, books I should read, and activities I should take up. Once I came upon a list I'd made of things to do before I die, where I'd written numbers 1 through 50 down the left-hand column, but only came up with about five or so activities. I aim low.

So I resolve once again to make no resolutions this New Years. Phew it feels so good to be let off the hook by myself so early in the game. Oh sure, I vaguely pledged to worry less, be nicer to my husband, and keep my house cleaner but we all know that none of that is likely to change overnight. I yam what I yam: a messy paranoid meanie.

However, I did kick off the new year by doing one onerous cleaning task: I sorted out my kitchen cupboard. It's the cupboard (actually two doors, covering three shelves) over my main prep area, where I keep basically all of my smaller ingredients, spices, baking stuff, etc. For years I have just piled things on top of other things and let them accumulate, wedging miscellaneous spices and crap into the front one inch of shelf space as it came along. See? A mess. So the other day I was irritated by it and I tackled it.

In addition to discovering that many of my herbs and spices no longer had any recognizable scent besides "dust" and that I was storing a few empty jars in the cupboard, I found the following ridiculousness:

- two near-full bags of shredded coconut
- 4 bags of dried thyme
- 3 bags of icing sugar
- 3 bags of rock-hard raisins
- 2 full cartons of molasses
- a HUGE jar of 'ground amchur' (mango powder?) that I bought once for
an Indian recipe that required, like, a teaspoon of it. I have had
approximately six pounds of mango powder hanging around for 11 years.
- 2 full jars of instant coffee (we do not drink instant coffee)
- a big jar of green flakes that I at first suspected might be someone's
stash of marijuana, but turns out to be a pile of real green loose-leaf tea
- no less than 5 jars of honey. For this I blame the Austrians and the Germans - every time they come and leave whatever place they have rented/occupied, they bring us their unused food, and they like honey. We always get the leftover honey (and pasta, pounds and pounds of it). Same with pesto - I must have 7 jars of pesto in my fridge.

I also found about four half-bags of rice so old that it had yellowed, about 7 different kinds of lentils, various jars of mystery powder (don't get excited, most came from the bulk barn), and two unopened boxes of salt that are hard like bricks. There were a lot of 'what the hell is this?' moments, where I sniffed a jar or a bag and set it aside.

Here is a shot of my cupboard, taken AFTER the great cleanse. Hubby says "this still looks like a 'before' shot." har har. Note: shelves are still sagging, though they are propped up behind that middle bar. Don't worry, my lentils are safe.

I realized a few things during this process: 1. I am a food pack rat, and 2. I have weird friends. How many friends do you have who have gifted you with strange bundles of herbs for asian soups and packets of agar agar powder? A giant bag of loose green tea from China? Three different friends. Lumps of cane sugar? Part of Christmas gift 2006 from friend #2, may have come with the agar agar powder. I feel like some kind of minor deity, with all these food offerings. I guess my friends also know that I am a food pack rat. I was just given several lovely foil-wrapped packets of Korean tea and from this paragraph you may surmise that I am into tea, but actually I am not. Sorry friends. I drink really mundane coffee from a crappy percolator, hate to disappoint.

As I write this I am plowing through a baggie of Christmas-issue jelly belly jellybeans. Just ate one that tasted suspiciously of barf.

So I am not making any resolutions, just taking this break as an opportunity to start fresh with certain things, get some chores done, try not to disgust myself anymore with my gross food hoarding. I may make a minor promise to get through the 7 jars of pesto and 18 kilos of pasta, to prepare all of those lentils somehow and to stop buying things in bulk and forgetting
to label them.

Here's to 2012. I promise to follow all of your exploits in self-betterment with mild fascination from my spot on the couch. Cheers to you all.