The Accidental Hoarder: How I Wound up With a Rice Surplus, Plus a Plan to Use It All Up

We all overbuy something at some point in our lives. It may be that great sale on jars of mayo, or the too-good-to-pass-up deal on salad greens, or in my case a 20-lb bag of white rice. We don't set out to buy more mayo, or greens, or grains than we plan on eating. The amount all seems reasonable at the time. Then at some point, we realize we have more than we really want.

Back in 2023 my husband told me he really, really preferred white rice over brown. We'd been a brown rice household for 35 years. I thought we all enjoyed it. Turns out, 2 of us enjoyed brown rice a little less than the rest of us. In my search for the best price per ounce, I found 20-lb bags of white rice from Walmart to be the best deal. So I bought 2 bags. Might as well really save big and buy 40 pounds, right? It really was a good deal, that is if we could have eaten it in a timely manner. Stocking up on foods can save money. It can also provide some food security in the event of an income downturn, a bad garden year, or significant grocery inflation. And rice is one of those pantry "safety net" foods. It's inexpensive, versatile, and can be stored at room temperature for many months. But if the food isn't eaten before spoilage, the large purchase is money down the drain, or in my case, onto the compost heap.

Do you know how many servings 40 pounds of dry rice cooks into? A little over 550 half-cup servings! 550 servings divided by 4 people, that's 137 meals with rice as a side dish. After about the first 40 meals of white rice, my family members that had once preferred white rice over brown now told me they missed the brown rice. So I focused more on using brown rice instead of the white. And now, we're sitting on about 30 pounds (more or less) of white rice.

As strange as this sounds, I feel ashamed that we have so much white rice, like I should be featured on Hoarders: Kitchen Edition. My sister, who has never hoarded food at all, would be mortified to see her little sister on an A & E show talking about her rice hoarding. But, that's what this blog is here for. I can confess my issues and think through ways to work through them.

My Plan

First of all, I should let you know that the rice is now stored in the deep freeze to prolong its nutrition and quality. Despite this, I'd like to finish off this surplus by years' end. That's a reasonable goal right? Seven months to eat 30 pounds of rice. Is this doable?

We have 420 servings of rice to go, and 7 months to do this. That's 60 servings per month, or 15 family meals with rice as a side dish per month. In actuality, we eat more than a standard 1/2 cup serving. Tonight I made rice as a side dish and used 1 cup of dry rice. This cooked up into 3 cups. We had about 1/2 cup leftover. So in 1 family meal, we use 2 1/2 cups cooked rice, or 2/3 cup per person. At this rate of consumption, we'll need to have rice 12 times per month, or 3 times per week. That's a lot of rice.

Fortunately, we've just recently used the last of our potatoes. For the next 4 months, we can focus our starchy side dishes more heavily on rice. How to do this?

• make traditional rice desserts, such as rice pudding, once per week.
• cook rice in large batches to divide and freeze in meal or recipe size portions.
• Substitute rice for bread and pasta in savory dishes, such as a rice base under marinara sauce or an egg, cheese and rice "strata," at least once per week.
• invent new desserts to use rice, such as cooked rice folded into sweetened whipped cream and sliced strawberries -- oh, this has already been invented. There's something called Glorified Rice that combines sweetened whipped cream, cooked rice, miniature marshmallows and fruit.
• use cooked rice combined with an egg and shredded cheese for a quiche crust, at least twice per month.
• grind dry rice into flour to use in baking cookies and quick breads, weekly.

I think this can be done. I just have to shift my emphasis from other starches, such as wheat flour and potatoes to using rice. And it's just for 7 months. This is doable.

Prevention in the Future

To keep from overbuying rice or any other food, I really should consider how much we can reasonably eat in a given time period. For example, with the rice purchase, I could have calculated the servings per 20-lb bag, then divided by the number in my household and the time period we wanted to consume the amount. And that point I should have asked myself, do we really want to be eating this food that many times in this given time frame? Packaging makes some of this work easy. on the nutrition label there's usually a serving size followed by servings per package. I could have done the rest of the math to see if we wanted 40 pounds of rice.

For food surpluses that sneak up on you, like buying an extra jar of mayo here and there, later to find you have 8 jars of mayo someplace in the pantry, organization goes a long way. If all jars of mayo are always stored in the same place, it's easy to see that a surplus is building every time you open the pantry door. 

Finally, what we learned during Covid was that emergencies don't last forever, and sales cycle back around in a reasonable amount of time. Although I couldn't find yeast in my local stores for about 5 months, the yeast shortage eventually ended. The deal on rice was there again in about 9 months after my big purchase. I could have bought enough for 6 to 9 months, then bought more at that later time.

There shouldn't be shame attached to hoarding anything. Hoarding, in the true sense of the word, usually indicates some psychological need not being met in any other, more appropriate, way. But still, I feel worse than silly to have bought so much rice. I'm dealing with my feelings and allowing myself some grace for mistakes. At least I know this, I'm not likely to overbuy rice again in my life. Lessons learned are a bonus in life by transforming mistakes into wisdom.

Have you ever overbought something? How did you deal with the surplus? Did you make a plan to use it up, and then a future plan to prevent this from happening again? Share in the comments if you have been an "accidental hoarder," too?