SHOPPING HABITS, GOOD AND BAD

My parents do not buy food or other various necessities unless it is on sale. Then, when it does go on sale, they buy large quantities of the discounted item. This is a pretty sound practice. It is also self-supporting. By buying enough when things are on sale, they never run out of any given necessity. There's always a box or two stored in a closet somewhere. Since they never run out, they never need to get a specific item and therefore do not get trapped into paying higher prices. They can afford, in terms of time, to wait for the sale. It generally works pretty well for them and, I believe, saves them a good deal of money.

It helps that they have free reign over an entire house in which to store what they’re not currently eating. I do not. This is one of two reasons I get into trouble when I attempt to put this practice into effect. I share a house with three others, all of whom insist on storing their food somewhere in the house as well. If they could just agree not to keep any food here, we would all be happier. Well, I would be happier, they would be hungrier. Since they continue to take up space, I have very little room of my own in which to store what I am eating, let alone anything extra I wish to put aside for another day.

The other reason I have difficulty when attempting to follow my parents’ example is that while I have a good grasp of the generalities I tend to muff the specifics. Specifically I often neglect the importance of the fact that I am only one person and I only eat as much food as one person can eat. It’s not that I don’t know this, I do know it, what I get wrong is failing to appreciate how my limited rate of consumption relates to terms like “perishable.”

In other words, I do not always make the best decisions regarding which food items I choose to store. Take, for instance, Ranch Dressing. It comes in a small bottle as do most salad dressings. This makes it easy to store and, given its relative volume, it seems on first impression like something I would go through pretty quickly. If this were true, it would be the ideal candidate for my parent’s bulk sale purchase policy. One does not go through a food very quickly, however, when one only uses small amounts with each use, does not often eat salads, and tends to prefer Italian dressing anyway.

I am, as you may have guessed by now, referring to a specific incident. At dinner this week, one of my guests requested Ranch Dressing. I happily retrieved the bottle I had been storing in the top cabinet for just such an occasion. I’d been meaning to open it for some time and was delighted to finally have the opportunity. When I brought it into the light I noticed it was what can only be described as a light tan color. This did not alarm me, partly because I tend to operate on wishful thinking and partly because this particular bottle had been that color as long as I could remember. It did, however, alarm several of my guests, who decided it might be safest to check the expiration date before actually applying this substance to their food.

I was surprised, not realizing salad dressings even have an expiration date. I tend to be of the school of thought that if an item is sealed and unopened, it should keep indefinitely. This, as I was about to discover, was not a correct assumption. The bottle did indeed have an expiration date. It was three and a half years past. As one of my guests pointed out, that’s just when it expired; it is likely I have owned that bottle longer even than that. At the very least I have carried it with me through three separate moves.

Of course, we had to open it up to see what it looked like. I’ll relieve the suspense right now: not pretty. After everyone had gotten a look, I threw it out.

I wish I could say that this is the first time such a thing has happened. Thinking about it as I write this, I seem to recall a bottle of French Dressing with similar problems. Maybe I’ll learn my lesson this time. Maybe I’ll be more careful in my choices when it comes to buying extra food I do not intend to eat right away. Right now, though, I think I need to go through my cabinets and take a close look at all those things I’ve been saving for later.