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The big clear out has begun.  As I dragged four bags of grocery shopping across the car park to the lift up to the fifth floor I thought, only 4 more weeks of doing this.  Our departure is  imminent so why am I even grocery shopping anyway? It’s time to start eating up all the surplus food in the house. 

A quick look in the kitchen cupboard  and a whole half litre bottle of Worcestershire sauce stares back at me.  It was the smallest size I could buy.  I thought I couldn’t live without Worcestershire sauce but looking at the large volume of liquid I have left, obviously I could. I’ve also two nearly full bottles of Balsamic vinegar – one I purchased and one inherited from a departing ex-pat wife, together with two jars of Branston Pickle. 

I hate waste but who can I donate my remaining store cupboard ingredients to? Most of my British friends have now returned to the UK – we’re just hanging on until the teenager finishes school in June. Could I convince my American friends to try a salad tossed in that good olde British traditional vinaigrette of Balsamic infused with Worcestershire sauce and Branston pickle? I doubt it.  

I’ve two hundred and fifty odd Sainsbury’s tea bags to get through –  even at four cups a day seven days a week, I’m going to have a fair few left over when we leave.  Have I over-stocked?  I demanded packets of teabags from every visitor; I stashed hundreds of  them  in my suitcase every time I visited the UK, panic buying in the extreme.

There’s the usual array of half used herbs and spices – bought for one recipe and never used again. I don’t think I have ever got through a full jar of nutmeg before the end of the sell-by date.  What do I do with these? Donate them to the homeless begging on the streets of Pasadena? Hey guys I know you really want money for crystal meth but could you use a jar of ground ginger instead?

What else have I got lurking in my cupboards that is totally surplus to requirement? Paracetamol . Yes I’ve enough packets of those to start up my own pharmacy.  Spray deodorant -another example of over-zealous importation from the UK.  I realize I still have three cans to get through. I can hardly go around  donating these to my friends with a casual would you like some anti-perspirant? What kind of response would that provoke??

I’ve already taken four bin bags of various clothes, shoes and books to Goodwill and the teenager hasn’t even started on her room yet.  Why do we accumulate so much stuff??  Even though we’ve only lived in our apartment for two years I still have a kitchen drawer full of those useless odd buttons, wall plugs, pieces of wire, replacement light bulbs for Christmas lights we no longer have and spare keys – to what?? 

And what about the four unused sheets of return address labels? In the US you are required to put your home address on any mail you send so I ordered a handy supply of printed labels on the internet – they were very cheap and if I ordered 250 I got another 250 free, but now of course I have at least 250 left.  How many letters can I write in the next four weeks? Perhaps the answer is  to kill two birds with one stone and distribute my unwanted jars of spice in the post….