The tradition in Japan is to end the year with all your slates clean: bills and debts paid, gratitude given, and house and grounds thoroughly cleaned.
This year I have managed none of that. But I did tackle a task today, in the eleventh hour, that’s been on my list for six months. I wrangled the spices into order. Our collection grew to a shop’s inventory during the pandemic. It needed paring down.
Tod and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon culling expired spices, rejarring, labelling, and alphabetizing (yay) the keepers, and then cleaning up the half dozen emptied storage bins and myriad old jars.
We are going to have the best smelling trash in the neighborhood to start the year.
