I live in Canada. Up here, pretty much everyone who has a house also has a basement.

Basements are more rare in Arizona. In fact, growing up, I always dreamed of living in a house with stairs. That was my fondest wish (second only to an older brother for my sister and I [but imagine my despair when I discovered that no matter how many more children my mother bore, none of them—brother or sister—would ever be older than me]). Basements were so exotic…

…only now that I live in a house with one, I find them more than a little terrifying. Ours has a finished living room, bedroom, and bathroom, along with an unfinished other bedroom, laundry room, and food room.

It’s the food room I want to talk about today. When walking through the basement’s damp and musty hallway, one (well, probably only I) feel instantly unsettled. The cold tile flooring is uneven on account of whoever built our house was a crook who should have had his license revoked. The walls are lined with narrow wooden strips that could be cute…if they weren’t there. The basement is dark, chilly, and smells like produce and cardboard.

So it’s already creepy as it is, but somewhere along the line, the homeowners decided to up the creepy anti by, like, a thousand. With this door to the food room:

That’s right. Somewhere in the world, some hotel’s room #26 is missing a door. Can you imagine? I wish I could hunt down whoever built our house and force the story of this door out of them. Where did they swipe it? What is its history? And I know it was a hotel room door, because look at the plaque on the opposite side:

Anyway, I’m glad to have a food room at all. Inasmuch as I hoard food, it’s convenient to have it all in one place, organized in perfectly-faced rows just like in Safeway. See?

I have a canned vegetables section, canned soup section, a whole stockpile of canned mushrooms (we thank you, Aunt Linda!), a Mexican food area (because I don’t want to live in a world without El Pato Sauce [otherwise known as the stuff dreams are made of].

I also have a designated space for pasta and sauce, in which I include Kraft Dinner (Mac & Cheese for all you USA residents) and Ramen noodles. Because we’re cultured like that.

My food supply is not impressive by most people’s standards, but it’s nevertheless thrilling to me. Every time I go grocery shopping, I buy whatever stockpile-able food is on sale, as much as our budget allows—and it’s growing. Slowly, but definitely growing.

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