Stubborn Mind Tricks...

I cleaned out the pantry today. It was getting really messy and needed to be straightened up. 

Too many grocery trips where there wasn't like a really logical space to put the item so it just went on a shelf. Do that often enough and you have a mess and have no idea what you really have. 

I've been putting it off for weeks and finally decided I had to do it today.

I threw away so much stuff. 

Wasteful. I know.

And I know that most of that stuff would have been just fine. That they put expiration dates on most foods just so you will do that. Toss it and buy more. Smell and taste that's what you need to use to judge if things are still "good" or not. Best by dates, expiration dates, unless it's a food like meat, or dairy they don't really matter. 

And yet...

I threw away so much stuff. 

And some of it was stuff that I hadn't thrown away the past couple times I've tidied the pantry, even though I knew that they were past their dates. I said, NO! You know these are fine and just use them, but looking at the shelves today I saw that I had even put new groceries away from the past their dates things. Like there was a space around them. Nothing new touching them. And I clearly hadn't used them. Because eww.

And that's it, I just can't get past that part. Even though logically I KNOW those are made up numbers, emotionally I am still like....but yeah, that's gross. 

So now I'm trying to figure out what else I do this with. Things that I know logically aren't true but emotionally I'm still all in. 

It probably matches with the habituation thoughts lately. Things I need to pay attention to, or stop paying attention to. And then the next step of convincing myself that a true thing is a true thing no matter how much my lizard brain is arguing with me. 

I think I need to decide that I'm mad about the dates. That it's just a sign of capitalism controlling everyone. That they are fucking with people because they can. And that I won't be a part of it. 

If I can get a full head of steam worked up about being mad at the corporations it might just work. It's how I stopped eating much processed food. I read Salt, Sugar, Fat and the timelines of how the food industry worked to increase the items in our food products that our brains get addicted to. The things we crave. Why we have so much added sugar to EVERYTHING. And once I got mad enough about it I changed a lot of what we eat. 

For a while we ate nothing processed, it was all made from scratch. Then I realized that I might be really mad at Big macaroni and cheese but the most I'm willing to do is change to Annie's over Kraft for my blue box vice. 

But if I could change my mindset about 80% of the dates I would save a lot in waste over the next 44 years of my life. 

I just need to get mad about it...

But I mean....ewww...