Decluttering - But Not In A Good Way

This post is a bit of a name and shame post, a bit like washing my dirty linen in public. For I am decluttering my food cupboards, in public.  And I feel very bad about it.

Decluttering is rife in Blogland right now, e.g. clear 25 items in January. I have to say that I've never previously started the year with a hardcore declutter campaign, they've usually happened randomly through the year (if at all!).  But it makes sense to tidy and organise the house in January and the rest of the year is guilt-free!

I've just come out of 6 weeks of lethargy and I was itching to tackle some tidying and some organising head on and besides,  I wouldn't feel guilty when reading of other bloggers' good work if I participated.  So I did.

From hereon it gets embarrassing.  I started with the kitchen, an easy target as I knew that was an area I could easily rack up the numbers as for some months (years?) my food cupboards have been getting out of hand. The embarrassing bit was how much I cleared from my food cupboards.

The above came from the jar cupboard.  Easily more than 25 items in this batch alone.

Many things were way past their BBD but they would probably be edible; however, I know that the date would put me off each time I thought of trying them.  So they got ditched.

(I of course emptied and recycled all tins, plastics, cardboard etc.  I'm not a total baddie!)

I give you the purged jar cupboard - I can now go in here without things crashing down in the cat bowls below.  Jar cupboard, my No. 1 target, done!

Next came the condiments cupboard.

Yup, another name and shame moment.  But what to do, nowhere here will take past BBD food.

The Big Cupboard came next. This is it tidy - can you imagine what it was like before?!

I cleared out other less offending cupboards and my last was the one below. 

I was so swept away by my work at this point that I forgot to take after-shots.

But I think you're getting the picture - I've haven't tackled these cupboards in a while! 

So, dear readers, I'm on target with my de-clutter.  But not in a good way.

Because a lot of food has been thrown away, which in today's world I feel bad about.  I also feel bad about it in yesterday's world.  My mum used to love doing grocery shopping with me, because her fave bit of the task was to put things away in cupboards (which I've never been a fan of).   She'd look at the stocked cupboards with such pleasure.  She had experienced the struggle of coping with the availability and cost of food as a girl and then bringing up a family, so an abundance of food in later life was something she valued highly.

Yes, I felt bad getting rid of so much food.  But it got me to think of mum's food shortage, it got me to think of the world's food shortage.  And although my stockpile of out-of-dates was not intentional, I do not want to create this situation again. 

It got me to realise that I need to approach food shopping and food usage in a more organised way.

Who would have thought that meaningful reflection and resolution could come from emptying a few cupboards in order to get with the decluttering programme! 

Now, what about you, dear readers?

Have you got caught up in the decluttering bug?

Or are you someone who keeps on top of things?

A la perchoine.