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Post by mcscrapper on Dec 31, 2017 23:10:28 GMT
I think the reason why the club stores are appealing is because they can go once and think they won’t have to venture out again for a month. Once it starts to get harder for older folks to get out and about, they want to knock as much off of their to do list as they can and it may very well be easier to go to Costco or Sam’s once than it is to go to the smaller, closer grocery store every week. I would agree with you to some degree but my dad never sits still....still plays in a Mens' over 70 softball league, shoots 2-4 times per week and is the range master on Sundays, walks his dog 2-3 times a day, and has a busier social calendar that I have! It just baffles me that a trip to Costco or Sam's would probably cost 10x more than at the closer grocery store. And the amount of toilet paper in that house was impressive. I probably didn't have to buy any for about 6 months!!! I get it for some elderly folks tho. I really do think there is still some residual Depression Era mentality. I'm still not eating their expired food. SaveSave
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Post by maryland on Dec 31, 2017 23:22:19 GMT
Why is it always mother in laws? ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/5645536/images/MNrJDkDuSwqIMVw33MdD.jpg) My husband tells me work stories all the time (works with all men) and they always have mother-in-law stories too. I have to laugh about that! My grandmother had some type of topical medicine that had expired 12 yrs. ago in her medicine cabinet! And she is a nurse. We all had a good laugh over that. I guess she didn't clean out her medicine cabinet often. I am paranoid about food safety, so I wouldn't eat it. That's why I prefer to eat at home and not other people's houses. I am weird I guess!
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Post by psoccer on Dec 31, 2017 23:25:44 GMT
My mom loved going out to the store every day, and my 90 year old aunt gets out of the house almost daily as well. In my opinion, the buying in bulk is more of a safety measure, that there will be enough food if something happens, rather than limiting trips out of the house. However, everyone is different. And, thanks to the peas, I learned a while ago to date my dressings.
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LeaP
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,939
Location: Los Angeles, CA where 405 meets 101
Jun 26, 2014 23:17:22 GMT
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Post by LeaP on Dec 31, 2017 23:29:01 GMT
My mother has terrible food safety practices. She keeps lukewarm water in her sink and just swishes her hands in it after handling raw meat. I use DH as a reason to try to teach her better food handling. Argh! From November to January my hands are raw from washing them while I cook. This thread is almost making me feel virtuous. Usually, the would you eat and cleaning threads make me feel like a total slacker, but it would seem that I am not so bad. SaveSave
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Post by Spongemom Scrappants on Jan 1, 2018 0:00:43 GMT
OMG. The dishes. The dishes! Uggh. My ex-MIL (now deceased) was not a homemaker and fully admitted it. I went to wash the tea pitcher at her house many years ago and couldn't find any dishwashing detergent. She blithely said, "Oh, I don't buy any of that," and went on to explain that everything got washed in the dishwasher. Ummmm... but the tea pitcher didn't fit. So, the tea pitcher *never* got washed. Just rinsed out, I guess. I never drank tea there again.
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Post by scrapperal on Jan 1, 2018 0:42:44 GMT
This thread saddens me that so many of us are dealing with this, but also gives me a bit of solace that I'm not the only one who is dealing with this.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Jan 1, 2018 2:08:36 GMT
Why is it always mother in laws? ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/5645536/images/MNrJDkDuSwqIMVw33MdD.jpg) My husband tells me work stories all the time (works with all men) and they always have mother-in-law stories too. I have to laugh about that! My grandmother had some type of topical medicine that had expired 12 yrs. ago in her medicine cabinet! And she is a nurse. We all had a good laugh over that. I guess she didn't clean out her medicine cabinet often. I am paranoid about food safety, so I wouldn't eat it. That's why I prefer to eat at home and not other people's houses. I am weird I guess! LOL. In my case, my siblings and I stepped in with our mom before she could get that bad. My brother lived with her and took care of her, cooked all her meals and did the grocery shopping. With MIL, her daughter (who lived four blocks away) didn’t really want to deal with her any more than she absolutely had to so it fell mostly onto DH and me to check up on her and we lived across town making it harder.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Jun 29, 2024 0:01:03 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2018 2:28:19 GMT
My mom is that food hoarder. Not on purpose though. She just buys what she needs and if it's on sale, she'll buy extra. Problem is that she'll often forget about the extra and buy more! So if she needs frozen vegetables and they're on sale 5/$5, she'll buy 5. This isn't a case of the store doing the whole you have to buy 5 to get the sale price like Walgreens does. She'll put the excess in the freezer and forget about it.
DH ate some pizza rolls that were outdated out of her freezer, thinking they've been frozen, can't be that bad. He spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom. We've gone through my parents' cupboards, fridge and freezer a few times and I still find stuff that moved with them 18 years ago. I think I finally got it all. My parents are not from the depression era but are products of the introduction of more canned and frozen food period.
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DEX
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,357
Aug 9, 2014 23:13:22 GMT
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Post by DEX on Jan 1, 2018 11:37:14 GMT
I WIN! When my aunt died in 1988 we found a can of WWII Army issued canned fruit cake in her freezer. Her son took one sniff after we had opened it and declared it “looked like sh*t and smells like sh*t.” Hey, why all the hate on 70 year olds? I am 67, soon turning 68. You, young, whipper snappers will be turning 40, 50 and 60 pretty soon. Have some respect for your elders. And I do feel 37.
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Post by mikklynn on Jan 1, 2018 11:58:10 GMT
I WIN! When my aunt died in 1988 we found a can of WWII Army issued canned fruit cake in her freezer. Her son took one sniff after we had opened it and declared it “looked like sh*t and smells like sh*t.” Hey, why all the hate on 70 year olds? I am 67, soon turning 68. You, young, whipper snappers will be turning 40, 50 and 60 pretty soon. Have some respect for your elders. And I do feel 37. Ha ha ... you won't get any hate from me! I have my 60th birthday approaching quickly. I feel 37, except days like yesterday when I did a big cleaning/purge of our storage area in the basement. I think I made 100 trips up and down the stairs. I felt 90. I really believe age is just a number. My parents are young at heart and fun at 80. I work with a woman who has been a old biddy since her 30's.
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Post by mikklynn on Jan 1, 2018 12:03:31 GMT
My MIL is a food hoarder and she has worsening dementia--she shouldn't be living alone but refuses to leave her house. When we were there for Thanksgiving, we sent the grandkids on a hunt through her pantry to see who could find the oldest expired food item. The winner was a can of cranberry sauce that expired in January 1996. ![(puke)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/sick.png) When we were there in June 2017, I cleaned out her refrigerator. There were baby carrots that had expired in October of 2016!! There were several bags in the produce drawer that were literally nothing more than green liquid. The eggs had expired in March and several of them in the carton were broken and nasty. The bacon had expired in April and I'm sure was rancid. The butter she got out of the freezer for me had expired in December 2012. There was a can of Campbell's Bean and Bacon soup on her counter that she fully intended to eat that had expired in 2005, before my 12-year-old daughter was even born! When we finally get her out of her house and into assisted living we are going to have to get a 40-yard dumpster for the expired food in her home. Not only is the entire large, full pantry bad, but there are 2 freezers stuffed to the gills with expired foods and she's a prepper so she has flats and cases of canned goods that have expired and some that have leaked and gotten moldy, but we can't even reach them to throw them out now because there's so much crap in the way. It's genuinely horrifying. DH said something to her in June when he found the 2005 soup but she just doesn't have the mental or physical capacity to get rid of the expired food or even remember to check before she eats things anymore. It's so sad and awful and just one of the many reasons she has NO business living alone in her home but she still won't consent to leave! Oh, my gosh. That is awful. I wish you luck. I know we'll be in crisis with my parents one day refusing to leave their home.
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Post by whipea on Jan 1, 2018 13:59:17 GMT
You are describing my D/H. Though he is not elderly and has been like this for as long as I have known him. Not to get too deep but his father was a hoarder and very dominant and controlling so he came with these behaviors deeply embedded. Funny thing is he is a kind and generous person, just has food and food sanitation issues.
He does not believe that expiration dates mean anything, feels they are a ploy to get you to buy more and if it is in a can or frozen it will never go bad. Further, he does things like reuse aluminum foil even if it held raw meet. His justification is the the bacteria will "dry out". When I throw it away he is truly puzzled by my actions.
I have to check everything before we cook or eat and do my best to get rid of expired food. Just last night he tried to cook some frozen shrimp. The expiration date on the bag said December 2016, they were freezer burned and smelled fishy. He said they were still good and he would he would eat them and open a new bag for me. Then he tries to give them to me anyway, breaking off the freezer burned portions saying again that they were "still good". Argh!
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Post by cmhs on Jan 1, 2018 14:21:52 GMT
My parents both had/have food hoarding issues and they are both products of the Great Depression. Before dad died and mom sold the house and moved to her apartment, they hosted our annual family Christmas party for many, many years. All of the siblings provided the food -- we would do amazing appetizers and fairly complex dishes -- it was a lot of fun. When it came time to clean up the food that had been sitting out far too long during the party, mom and dad would get so upset and almost angry if anything was thrown away. They wanted it all put in the fridge to enjoy another day. Mom stopped short of rescuing food from the trash but you could tell she wanted to.
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Post by bbkeef on Jan 2, 2018 19:38:15 GMT
I empathize with all of you. I have always had stomach issues. I get sick very easily. My in-laws cooked homemade venison brats and then proceeded to put the cooked brats back on the raw meat plate. I said I couldn't eat a brat and they said just take the one on the top so I did and I still got sick. I always eat cautiously at their house. We tend to bring food for any gathering there and try to eat only what we brought. My brother-in-law one time just opened her fridge and started throwing out the 3-4 year old salad dressings and the moldy cheese. I hate eating there, and thankfully we don't have to do it too often. I know they have iron stomachs, but we do not and they know it. I keep bringing up that we've had food poisoning before and we are not willing to risk it by eating expired food.
We just had Christmas at our house and food was left out for hours (I did put away what I could when no one was watching-I'm getting really good at it). I know I can't throw it away in front of them, so I put it in containers and smile. As soon as they leave I toss it. I am not eating brie cheese that was warmed, then sat out for 8 hours. Nope, nada, never!
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mallie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,253
Jul 3, 2014 18:13:13 GMT
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Post by mallie on Jan 2, 2018 20:08:25 GMT
People are so weird about food safety.
I knew a female attorney (so smart enough to go to law school and pass the bar) who thought food safety was "hogwash". Even after SHE ended up in the hospital for nearly 10 days after eating her own mayonnaise-based salad she had left in her car trunk for 2 hours on a 90 degree day. She did it again a few months later because she insisted the first time was just a "fluke." Ended up in the hospital AGAIN. Still insisted it was a "coincidence." After that, no one would ever eat anything she brought to a potluck. And I had no problem telling newbies to stay away from her food either.
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Post by mikklynn on Jan 2, 2018 20:43:28 GMT
My parents both had/have food hoarding issues and they are both products of the Great Depression. Before dad died and mom sold the house and moved to her apartment, they hosted our annual family Christmas party for many, many years. All of the siblings provided the food -- we would do amazing appetizers and fairly complex dishes -- it was a lot of fun. When it came time to clean up the food that had been sitting out far too long during the party, mom and dad would get so upset and almost angry if anything was thrown away. They wanted it all put in the fridge to enjoy another day. Mom stopped short of rescuing food from the trash but you could tell she wanted to. My mother is similar. I throw food away after she leaves, or like you, hide my actions.
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