I Cleaned Out My Kitchen Cabinets for the First Time in Years [Photos]

OMG!  I had a three-day weekend and made very few plans on how to spend it.  However, I did have one big project on the list.  I knew it had been a while since I went through all my kitchen cabinets, so I decided to clean them out and organize them.  What I didn't anticipate was learning that I am quite likely the poster child of food hoarders.

Okay, look!  When I was growing up, my grandparents always stored canned food.  They had shelves of it in the garage.  Plus, my grandmother canned stuff, so there were always massive amounts of food stored out by her Mercury.  Shelf after shelf after shelf. I just assumed they were saving it in case of nuclear holocaust (they were a paranoid people) or a zombie apocalypse.  And I just assumed that, being canned goods, they would last forever.  I mean, I used to watch The Walking Dead religiously and Rick and the crew were always pumped when they found canned goods in abandoned supermarkets and farm houses. And, I might add, they always ate it.

Well, I wasn't necessarily pumped with what I found in my own cabinets on Saturday afternoon.  I had no idea that some of those cans had been in our cabinets for YEARS.

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I found Progresso soup cans dating back to 2014.  Ummm, that's seven freaking years ago ! LOOK. AT. THE. DATE. ON. THE. BOTTOM. OF. THAT. CAN.  It shouldn't be in my cabinet.  It should be in the Smithsonian.

I found spices in my spice cabinet dating back to around 2010.  Honest question- do herbs and spices even go bad??  I know they have expiration dates, but they're spices.

But, the craziest find of The Great Kitchen Purge of 2021, was this . . .

Yes!  You're reading that correctly.  The date on that Campbell's Broccoli Cheese Soup can is November 2005.  I repeat. 2005!!!  It's almost sixteen years old.  For some perspective, I apparently purchased this can of soup just a year after joining the WBKR Morning Show.  It's been a minute.

When I picked the can up to throw it in the trash, I noticed that it was really light.  It didn't weigh what the other soup cans weighed. In fact, it also had this weird powdery/ashy substance around the top of the can.  So, naturally, because I am an inquisitive little chimp, I held my breath and popped open the can.

I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say this.  If Rick and the other survivors from The Walking Dead had a choice between eating this soup or starving to death or being eating alive by a zombie, they would choose option B or C.  It was SOOOO freaking gross and I don't have any idea how a yellow soup could turn into a burnt-orange gelatin, but that's what happened.

Needless to say, I was quite disgusted with myself for a) keeping food this long and b) wasting it.  Here's what my trash toter looked like when I was finished with the purge.

Yep!  It's exactly what it looks like.  My toter is completely full and trash day in my neighborhood isn't until Wednesday.  At this point, I fear for my toter's life.  I have some crazy a@% squirrels in the yard and, as soon as news spreads that Chad cleaned out the cabinets, it's gonna look like Golden Corral for vermin up in here on the west side of town.  My only advice to them- avoid the soup cans.