Cold Cereal and How My Family is Abusing It

We keep the cereal down on the bottom shelf of the closet pantry in the kitchen. We used to keep it in the two little half-cabinets above the stove until the boys were old enough to make their own bowls, and then I moved it down to where they could reach it. If they were going to eat 8 bowls a day, by golly, they could fix it themselves.


The shelf itself is pretty big, holding a 4 slice (2 that work) toaster, the canisters of regular and quick oats, a giant bag of add-water pancake mix, and a stack of plastic cereal bowls along with all the boxes of cereal.


That's right. ALL the boxes of cereal.

A dozen to be exact. All open. Some were duplicates.

When I investigated further, I found that seven of the boxes held maybe a quarter cup of cereal.




Not enough to be considered empty and thrown away, but not enough to fill a bowl either. And instead of pouring out the last few squares of Golden Grahams and then topping off the bowl from a new box, they (the kids) have been pushing the almost-but-not-quite-empty boxes to the back of the shelf and just bringing up another box from food storage.

Hence the 12 boxes of open cereal.

Do they not want to be accused of being the one who ate the last of something?

"Hey it's not all gone...saved those last 10 flakes for you!"

Do they believe the cereal "dust" is toxic?

Okay, I don't like the dust either, but now is not the time to be wasting food.

So I'm melting marshmallows and margarine and whipping up that classic after-school snack:
Rice Krispie/Cheerios/Golden Grahams/Frosted Mini Wheats/Crispix/Frosted Flakes/Cocoa Krispie/Cinnamon Life Treats.

A few extra marshmallows ought to hide all the dust.