I hosted a party recently. To prepare, I did useful and relevant things like organize the baby’s bureau, wash and vacuum the car, and clean the refrigerator. You never know. None of the guests looked in the baby’s room, car, or fridge, but they might have. Regarding the fridge, I feared someone might look inside for a cold soda and lose their appetite completely. The man-eating vines, the mossy landscapes might be too much for them. My fridge has its own ecosystem. Or it did until two hours before the party.

So I took everything out, washed the shelves, scrubbed the walls, and began putting the food back, wiping jars and taking inventory. I discovered the reason I am losing the battle of the icebox: creeping condiment syndrome.

You know you have creeping condiments when you have not one, not two, not three, but four opened and half-used bottles of soy sauce, three bottles of syrup, two jars of ketchup, and a partridge in a pear tree. Your condiments are breeding faster than you can keep them in check. Soon they will leave the confines of the fridge and start demanding space in the master bedroom. I had three half-empty squeeze tubes of tartar sauce. I don’t even like tartar sauce.

Condiments are the reason you can have a full refrigerator and nothing to eat. They crowd out real food the way that weeds choke plants in your garden. In my archaeological dig through my fridge, I found abandoned yogurts, bagels, tangerines – foods that lived a worthy life and deserved a better fate than to wither, forgotten, behind the sweet relish and the caramel topping.

Some people have so many condiments that they end up needing a second refrigerator – one for the food, one for the sauces. Considering that you may spend up to $100 per year for the juice to run a fridge, condiments begin to look like small house pets -- something you buy, agreeing to take on its long-term upkeep. Your Hellman’s mayonnaise may cost you as much in maintenance as a hamster. Ask yourself, when you reach for that jumbo jar of salsa: “Am I ready for this commitment?”

Nobody sets out to be enslaved by condiments. We simply forget what we already have when we’re shopping. The more crowded the fridge gets, the harder it is to see what’s back there, and so we crack open that new bottle of Ranch dressing. It’s a vicious spiral.

This malady of forgetting your condiments and crowding new ones in has a scientific name: condimentia. It’s more severe in older people who grew up during the Great Depression and can’t throw things away. These are the people who move cross-country and bring their opened condiments with them in a cooler chest.

My mother, who lives alone and eats about as much as the hummingbirds outside her window, is a lifelong sufferer of condimentia. She has a jumbo fridge, full to the gills. If you want to put something inside, you push and pray. There’s always a bottle of marinade spilling somewhere in the back.

I’ll be foraging in her fridge. “Mom, I remember this jar of novelty mustard. You’ve had it since I was in high school.”

“Mustard keeps a long time.”

“It’s brown!”

“It’s supposed to be.”

“Not like that. I’m throwing it out.”

“Not on your life!”

A few times when my sisters and I have visited, we’ve tricked Mom into leaving the house for a while, and cleaned out her disgusting fridge. Instead of thanking us, she’s gotten upset, and rummaged through the trash to rescue her chutney. If Mom had to make a choice between her kids or her condiments, which would she keep? Tough choice.

We hope someday there will be treatment available for sufferers like Mom. Maybe a restricted-sodium diet would force her to detach from her condiments and purge her fridge.

What if it’s congenital? Am I next? My fridge gets overcrowded, but I’m not emotionally attached to the Worcestershire sauce. And, for the guests at my party, I want them to know I only used fresh condiments in all the food I prepared for them. I know, because I opened new bottles, just be safe.

© 2005, Julianna Berry.