I've bought cumin four times this year

In March I stood in the spice aisle holding a jar of cumin, completely certain we were out. At home I found three: one open behind the flour, two sealed in the cabinet above the fridge.

I did not have a shopping problem. I had an inventory problem. The store kept selling me something I already owned, and I kept paying.

The embarrassing part: I remember buying each one. What I could not remember was owning any of them.

My brain treats a shut cabinet like a deleted file. If I cannot see the cumin, the cumin does not exist — and “does not exist” means “buy more.”

This is the same wiring that loses the mail the day it gets filed away. Out of sight is not tidy for me; it is gone.

The pantry is not the only crime scene. I own three rolls of packing tape, two hammers, and enough AA batteries to survive a blackout — all bought within arm's reach of the originals.

• Four jars of cumin, three of paprika, two of garam masala.
• Every duplicate was bought with total confidence.
• That confidence came from doors I could not see through.

The fix was not a laminated spice inventory. I made one in 2022; it survived exactly one grocery run before becoming fridge decoration.

What stuck is dumber: a photo of the open cabinet, snapped the moment I notice anything running low. In the store I scroll the last few pantry photos instead of trusting the feeling of “we're out.”

The photo habit has one rule: snap it before adding anything to the list, not after. A photo of a full cabinet from January tells me nothing in June.

• Everyday spices moved to one open rack at eye level.
• Duplicates got decanted into a single jar, dated with tape.
• The back row is allowed to be chaos; the front row tells the truth.

I still bought cumin again in June. One jar this time, and I found the others before the seal was even off.

Four jars became the family joke, but the joke had a ledger: roughly €30 a year in duplicate spices alone, plus the drawer space they squatted in.