Organizing the Pantry

Each year my mortgage payment goes up around a hundred dollars a month. Im now at the point where living the way im living, im breaking even, not making profit. So i sat down and made some new years resolutions. Budget wise, i need to buckle down for the next 13 years. I decided that the food budget was the place most hemorrhaging money. I would move to buying bulk rice at the h-mart in austin in 50 lb bags. I would buy two boxes of rice pasta a week ($10) and spend $90 including shipping on misfits market fedexed produce weekly. Im frustrated when the elders at work say to us “$50 on food, you’re complaining about $50 for food, do you know how much food i could go buy if i went to heb right now?” They shake their heads like we’re so irresponsible and entitled and dont know what the heck hard times are. But, they get a pass. They have dementia, and the last time they visited heb with a wallet and a shopping cart, $50 would have bought a lot of food. Now it buys 15 items. But, back in their day, before the current rate of inflation and lack of wage rising, $50 was a lot of money. Anyways, on the weekends i eat once or twice a day due to a medication that unfortunately is also an appetite suppressant and robs me of the joys of food and on weekdays i get full faster so eat less. If there were any way i could get off the medication i would but it seems to be vitally necessary to the endometriosis problem, though it comes with some not so great side effects of its own…it is not something i can get off right now. So the amount of food in the house at this time is currently plenty. It just all requires cooking. Im very busy these days, cooking and cooking again, as thats how it goes. Once you eat it, you necessitate the act of cooking once more. Anyways, most of my dry beans, rice, and flour are expired but i was determined that food not be wasted so i put what seemed salvageable on a couple shelves and organized the newer food (which was on the floor in the kitchen area of the one room tiny house) on the middle shelves. I took all the shelves out, dusted them, and flipped them over so they could warp in the opposite direction for a few years. Then i put the food i was keeping back on the shelves. I had things like oat milk, raisins, soup mix, olives, canned beans, and canned fish that i wouldnt likely buy again during the next ten years so i decided to savor those things until they were gone and then get used to this new food plan i had. You could see more of the floor now that the food was actually in the pantry. I also discovered the presence of a field mouse who had eaten her way through a box of soup and a box of flaked mashed potatoes. More reasons non-venomous snakes are important. Cats are just coyote food. Have you ever seen a 50 lb coyote eating a garter snake? Thats why theres snakes out here and theres not too many cats. Not cuz we dont stock up on them each year, cuz they dont stay. The snakes stay. I tell you what; anyone who says “the only good kind of snake is a dead snake” is a city dweller that hasnt had to find out how quickly 30,000 field mice can multiply in one season. They eat all the animal feed (sometimes right out of the animals mouth), drown in the livestock water bowls (thus contaminating them), chew all electric cords and hoses, destroy any and all packaging by shredding it for nesting material, and climb in through the dryer vent hole so they can chew through any cardboard boxes within reach. If you get a hail storm sometimes they end up stoned to death and the ravens pick at them but there’s always more smarter mice who made it underground before the hail began. Anyways, the pantry is organized, the budget is refigured, and im ready for january.