diff --git a/playbooks/update_packages.yml b/playbooks/update_packages.yml
index 5326beb6fa..9bb9f18ada 100644
--- a/playbooks/update_packages.yml
+++ b/playbooks/update_packages.yml
@@ -10,8 +10,15 @@
   user: root
 
   tasks:
-  - name: expire-caches
-    action: command yum clean expire-cache
-    
+
+  # TODO -- I'm not sure if state=latest will go ahead and expire the cache for
+  # us or not.  I'll comment this out for now, but if we experience problems in
+  # the future we can just uncomment it.  It definitely works with it in place,
+  # the problem is that the expire-cache command is not idempotent which results
+  # in partly confusing ansible-playbook results.  -threebean
+  #
+  #- name: expire-caches
+  #  action: command yum clean expire-cache
+  #
   - name: yum update ${package}
     yum: name=${package} state=latest