What do recessions and pantries have in common?

I have been buying pantry items for many years now, and I've observed a cycle at play that and it reminds me of the economic cycle of recessions and booms. There are times my pantry is full to bursting with tasty things to eat, and then I stop buying food because there's no room for it. Over time, the food supplies slowly dwindle but there is a problem. Finishing things off can be challenging for me. When I first buy something, I eat a lot of it, but by the time I'm around 3/4 way through, I've had enough and am ready for the next thing. Unfortunately, that last 1/4 seems to hang around FOREVER! and I mean forever. I've had little bits of items left over that take-up space for years.

All that junk floating around in my cupboards is pretty inefficient when you think about it. I have all this food I hardly eat, taking up space so I can't even see what I do have. This leads me to sometimes go on ""finishing sprees", where I make a conscious effort to finish things and open up space in my cupboard. I get creative during my finishing sprees and often make dishes I wouldn't have tried otherwise.

Over the last 1 month, I have been on a pretty hard "finishing spree" and have celebrated with every bit of open space I have created. Happily, I managed to make enough room that I promptly filled it with plenty of new stock, so I have no room again.

My pantry seems to be a representation of economic cycles in miniature. When times are good, we stock up, our economic cupboards become full until there is no more room to grow. There are at least 3 different types of pasta to choose from, various legumes, lots of nuts, flour and sauces and many other options. Options of what to consume and where to shop are endless and effortless. Life's good.

We bake, cook, and enjoy as we relish the delights of our well-stocked economic cupboards. But, we have to use up our resources, so slowly, the buying stops, and we consume what we have. Fewer new items are being added, and slowly it is all being consumed. Eventually, room opens up again, and the space is, once again, ripe for innovation and ideas. Maybe it's time for a new diet direction? 

Sadly, some ideas don't make it through to the next round, but some are so successful that we double up the next time. Sometimes our tastes change. That long-standing pantry item is swapped out for something else. For me, that was switching my white flour to wholemeal. In an economy, that might look like a long-standing label changing a business-as-usual practice to be sustainable because people's tastes have changed. 

As lovely as it is to always have a full cupboard, if all we did was buy buy buy buy, we would never have the opportunities to get creative with those last bits or clear out space for new things. Our cupboards (or maybe just mine) would be filled with junk and unused resources. I wouldn't have any room to even see what is working. My golden opportunities for creative dishes and a clear space would vanish, lost in a sea of junky little bits that just don't go away. 

In that way, a recession is good for an economy in the long run. Recessions are our chances to clear out the economic pantry's junk. To get extra creative with what we do have, let go of what's not working and embrace new opportunities and, just like my pantry, as soon as there is space to innovate, innovation will happen, and everything will bounce back up again. Ideas will flourish, new dreams will be realised, and feasts will be had all around. Life will be good again.