My life is like my spice cabinet

What is on your bucket list?  Going skydiving? Attending baseball games at all of the major stadiums? Buying a BMW M6?  I have a bucket list too, and I am in the process of tackling one of my items. My list has some fun goals on it, but it also has some things that I need to do for other reasons.  So what am I tackling? Cleaning out my spice cabinet, of course!

Dear reader, as I type this, I imagine you yawning as you click off this post, but I am who I am.  In our house, the spice cabinet occupies an entire three shelf kitchen cabinet. For years it has been so full that finding the most common item can require digging through its entire contents.

The cabinet serves as a repository of general baking items, such as baking powder and vanilla.  It has specialty items, like my wife’s ever-growing collection of cookie sprinkles. It has cooking items, like bouillon.  And of course, it has lots and lots of spices.

The last sentence may make you think that we are exotic gourmet cooks.  This is not the case. Like many, we buy an unusual spice to try out a recipe and then keep it.  Our cabinet has Chinese, Indian, and Cajun spices with names that I can’t even pronounce. We also have the usual spices: oregano, bay leaves, paprika, basil, thyme, cinnamon, that we use often.

 The cabinet is jammed packed, and I have wanted to clean it out for years, but the thought of doing the job was overwhelming.  Instead, I would waste time digging through unneeded items to find those common spices that I did need. I would rebuy spices that we had because I couldn’t locate them in the cabinet. The cabinet was so full that a little jostling would send these bottles to their death. It was common to have a bottle fall and shatter on the kitchen countertop when I went spice hunting, creating an unnecessary and sometimes dangerous mess.  

Yesterday I decided that enough was enough and I started the process of cleaning, eliminating and restocking.  Various jars and bottles completely covered my kitchen countertops. I sorted through them. Long expired spices went into the garbage, as did those spices that we used once and are likely never to be used again. I asked my wife if she wanted to participate in the cleanup.  She said no, and I couldn’t blame her. Her refusal has exonerated me from any future blame if I accidentally tossed out an item that she would have kept.

Today I’ll line the cabinet with shelf paper, and restock it with the saved items.  Cleaning a spice cabinet is like many life tasks. At some point, I’ll have to do it all over again.

Dear reader, if you have been following my blog, you likely realize that I find life lessons in just about everything. As humans, our responses are limited and routine. We tend to practice the same behaviors in many of our actions, whether it is in our lack of attention to a spice cabinet, or lack of attention to our lives, goals, and relationships.

These are the lessons that I learned from my spice cabinet cleaning:

  • Just like bottles of unused spices, it is easy to let unimportant things clutter up my life.
  • Keeping “brain clutter” around increases my chance of not paying attention to things that I do need to pay attention to.  The result is that unnecessary problems can come crashing down on me.
  • It is OK to give up those things that are not important to me, even if they would be considered important to someone else.
  • Sometimes I have to do the real work of cleaning this stuff out of my life, even if I don’t want to.
  • Doing this necessary work doesn’t have to be pleasant.  Necessary does not mean pleasant. Necessary means necessary.
  • When indicated, I need to include the feelings and needs of those around me when making such decisions. However, my needs also count.
  • This is not a one and done process, and I will need to repeat it once my life-clutter builds again.
  • If I do regular check-ins with myself, I will be able to deal with my life-clutter sooner. The task will become more routine, it will be easier to accomplish, and I will become more efficient at accomplishing it.
  • Just like spices, having a little variability and uncertainty adds interest to my life.  However, just like spices, too much ruins it.

Wishing you a clean spice cabinet, and just enough spice to make your life interesting!

a cabinet full of unused spices!