Clump #107: Clear off third shelf in pantry.

I found it!  I’ve been thinking of a cartoon I enjoyed years ago in The New Yorker magazine by the wonderful Roz Chast:  The Museum of One’s Kitchen.  Hurray!  Oh internet, is there nothing you can’t find?  I wish I knew how to make this bigger, but I’m just thrilled to be able to paste it in.

I’ve already documented cleaning “The Refrigerator Door Gallery / Don’t try to absorb it all in one visit.”

For years my husband has invoked the memory of “The Cabinet of Too Many Teas / Not even the curator knows why there are so many.” Here’s the shelf, emptied (whoops, note to self: clean spills on back wall):

And the too-many teas that had clogged it:

Of course there were items from “The Shelf of Antiquity / Products from before the dawn of time.” And, I’m sure, our very own “Impulse Buy Collection.”  Here is the culled shelf:

I discovered some rose tea I had bought after reading an article on Dr. Oz’s blog called Finding Balance During the Holidays by Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary, M.D.  Here is an excerpt:

Roses are used as medicine for emotional stress in ayurveda. In the West, we tend to associate the gift of roses with love and romance, and this stems from the concept that roses can “open” the heart by bringing it back into balance. There are 3 easy ways to incorporate the power of roses into your daily routine to balance your emotions:

 1. Make a tasty drink before bed by adding rose petal preserves to warm milk. Drinking it before bedtime helps you get a deeper, more rejuvenating sleep in addition to balancing the heart.

2. Drink a tea combining dried holy basil leaves (tulsi tea) with dried rose petals. Put the tea in a thermos and take small sips throughout the day.

3. Wear rose essential oil on your skin throughout the day as aromatherapy.

Ah … I feel more balanced already.