Moving Food: What to Toss and What to Keep
Moving a company or moving personal items are things in life that need an awful lot of preparation and organization in order to avoid them becoming massively stressful. Most people will plan a long way ahead and by the time moving day draws near they will have their house organized into piles of stuff ready to pack and moving boxes in place in each room ready to be filled. They’ll know all the rules about packing light stuff in big boxes and heavy stuff in small boxes and marking each box according to room, as well as whether it is fragile or not. Indeed most of the tasks associated with moving are fairly standard. Until that is you get to the kitchen. Most people, when confronted with the kitchen cupboards then go through hours and hours of trying to decide which stuff is worth keeping and which needs to finally be thrown away.
The best way to look at organizing the storage and moving of food starts in the kitchen cupboard. You must decide that the fresh start that moving home affords you can be applied to other areas of your life too. What better time to finally have a clear out of the old kitchen cupboard than when you move home? The first thing to do is get rid of all the nearly empty sauce bottles and jars, with sticky sauce around the rims. Then move onto the hundreds of different herbs and spices that you bought in a fit of good intentions (hoping to cook numerous eastern flavoured dishes) and which actually ended up sitting at the back of the cupboard watching the years roll by unused as you constantly refilled the salt, pepper and basil jars. If you can turn them upside down with the lid off and nothing comes out – throw them away. After that, explore all the tins gathering dust at the back. There’s no need to keep expired tuna or ancient tomato soup. When in doubt, throw it away. You’ll find the whole de-cluttering experience cathartic and an important part of your new start and of leaving your old home behind. Check all the long life milk to see if it has any life left and look out for old crackers too. Lastly look out for the novelty foods tucked away in dark corners, the foods that relatives gave you and you didn’t want to eat but never had the heart to throw away. Now’s your chance! Chuck it in the trash!
Of course doing all this means a fresh start at the other end too. There are certain essential foods that you will need to buy to get your new cupboard going. These include salt and pepper, mustard and ketchup, flour, sugar and spices (though don’t go mad this time!) You’ll want to stock up on drinks for moving in, from coffee and tea, orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice, soft drinks as well as comfort food such as cereal, oatmeal, chips, salsa, pickles, olives and cheese, bread, butter and milk. Those should get you going but also remember to go out and buy one or two easy to cook meals for when you need something decent to eat but haven’t quite got the energy to deal with a new kitchen.
Lastly, don’t forget the champagne, wine or beer to welcome you to your new home!
