I Bought a Kilo of Peanut Butter
I thought I'd learned my lesson about buying food in bulk after the 5 kg bag of sugar. Turns out I'd learned the wrong one.
The cupboard was empty of peanut butter, so I went online to sort it out.
It had to be Pip & Nut, crunchy. No palm oil in it, which matters to me, and I’m not buying a brand that can’t be bothered to leave it out.
Six 300 g jars for £14, or a 1 kg tub for £7. The six jars are actually more peanut butter overall — 1.8 kg against 1 kg — but that wasn’t really the comparison I was making. The comparison was simpler than that: £14 on peanut butter, in one go, is too much. Not today, not any day. That’s just an absurd amount of money to commit to a condiment.
So I ordered the kilo. Felt rather pleased with myself about it, too.
What I hadn’t thought through was where any of it was actually going to live.
Six 300 g jars have an obvious home. One goes in the condiment cupboard with the mustard and the marmalade, and five go in the storage cupboard out the back, quietly waiting their turn.
A 1 kg tub doesn’t have an obvious home. It’s not a condiment-cupboard item. It’s got the dimensions of a small kitchen appliance, and about as much business sitting next to the marmalade.
I’ve bought myself a peanut butter boulder, and I genuinely don’t know where it’s going to go.
This is the sugar bag, again. Same logic exactly: I talked myself out of the sensible option because of the price on the label, and ended up with the one thing in the house that doesn’t fit anywhere. Avoiding £14 got me a kilo tub instead, in exactly the same way avoiding whatever a normal bag of sugar cost got me 5 kg of the stuff. What I keep forgetting is that dodging one kind of excess doesn’t stop you walking straight into another.
I don’t think I’m going to eat more peanut butter because there’s more of it sitting in the cupboard. That’s not really the risk here. The risk is purely logistical. I’ve acquired an object, and the house now has to accommodate it.
I thought I’d learned my lesson about buying food in bulk.
Apparently I’d learned the wrong one.
Somewhere in this house there’s a cupboard that’s about to have a very firm opinion about that.