“That’s funny. This expired when I was ten years old.”
I’d been shopping through my mom’s spice cabinet yesterday for herbs to add to my soup.
That was when I encountered some containers that should’ve been tossed out around the same year I sucker punched Marquita for kissing my first boyfriend. One or two of the spices had gone funky – as a quick whiff confirmed. And for whatever reason, this sort of surprised me. Bio degree or not, I keep around expired stuff. Part of that’s the “ah, it’ll be fine” part of my brain. And the polar opposite other-half reason is the “in case there’s an apocalypse” part of my brain. I even have some canned chicken soup leftover from my meat eating era – and every time I look at it, I envision my future dystopian family and I huddled around it with spoons, covered in soot, and saying “good thing we saved this…” as the moans of the reanimated dead beckon tirelessly below my apartment, like a soused crowd at the end of a day long Buffet concert. This jarring concept of condiments going bad made me wonder…
…what other horrors does my kitchen harbor?
Aside from me being the cook?
And I got my answer today, in the form of something probably more life threatening than a bottle of French something-or-other spices whose ambient moisture served as bacterial utopia over the past two decades: like the stuff that keeps CDC dudes from catching anthrax – bleach. 75 employees were exposed to live anthrax last month, as theirs had been expired. I remember using bleach in the labs back in college – along with UV radiation – to denature (unfold/render useless) the proteins of infectious agents. What I didn’t realize is that after six months or so, the stuff in it meant to defeat those bad-guy proteins starts to decompose. And in summer time – that happens even faster. It’s not that it’s totally useless after six moths, but that’s just when the “at your own risk” bit kicks in ‘cause they can’t guarantee anything past that date.
Other everyday stuff they say expires are condoms. Snakey skull caps bite the dust in half a decade because the latex degrades along with the moisture – and so does the swimmer-killer (if you use spermicide). Then there’s sunscreen – which clumps up and thus doesn’t cover the skin evenly (and as frequently as I don’t use mine, that’s probably exactly how the one in my closet looks). They say your loofa should also get the boot every month (wait, can’t we just wash it like the kitchen sponge?). And mascara starts to breed bacteria before too long, too – a fact I’m generally unwilling to follow because of how expensive makeup is.
And then there’s the not-deadly-but-ineffective stuff around the house that also goes bad (allegedly) like acne creams and soaps. It’s said that – as with the bleach – because of the degradation, these items become ineffective; so you shouldn’t buy in bulk.
I tend to disagree.
I’ve reached for outdated benzoyl peroxide on weeks my mug looks like the moon (that’s why they call it lunar cycle, right?) and it hasn’t failed me. You know what else hasn’t failed me? That moment when I realize I’m out of my snobby soap and a simple bar of whatever will do. When I’m all scrubbed clean (because half the point of scrubbing is to mechanically wash off bacteria, not smite them where they stand) and emerge from the shower smelling like the inside of Yankee candle company, I can’t help but think soap doesn’t really expire.
But I’m the see-for-myself sort of person. And I tend to think a lot of people are, since so many other products we buy seem to have built in “obsoletion” dates (set to stop working just after warranty so you hafta buy another). That said, as I’m still reliving the scent of rotten French seasoning, I’ll pay attention to those dates. But just those.
Mmwell… maybe both the condiments and condoms.
Although my future kids I’m not having could do stuff like filter out my expired spices.
What? She missed like, three that expired yesterday.
Could’ve killed me.
Bitches gots to learn.