Cleaning Out the Fridge

 You know what happens. 

That container of very delicious soup that you could eat for lunch the next day---isn't eaten because plans change so it eventually is pushed to the back of the fridge.

It is much more economical to buy the bigger bag of carrots.  After you use a small number of them in the chicken noodle soup you are making, the rest can be nibbled on by one of the kiddos or dipped into that great dill dip you picked up at the store.

Who wants to throw away frosting, especially the homemade cream cheese frosting for cinnamon rolls that seems to last forever because not everyone likes it or that buttercream icing for the cake that didn't bake (see previous post), especially since the buttercream icing does have a pound, yes a pound, of butter in it!

Those little individual servings of peach and vanilla yogurt that are great for the kids?

A nearly empty bottle of rhubarb jam.

Why did we buy lemons?

A ziplock bag of ketchup packets from take out orders?

Reminder to self - If a  whipped cream cheese carton is in the back of the fridge with a very expired date on it, DON'T OPEN IT!  Definitely practicing the gag reflex on that one!

The refrigerator was new in September 2018.  While I (or Gary) routinely goes thorough some of the containers and the produce drawers and pitch outdated items, I have not removed everything and washed the drawers and the shelves.  It wasn't bad, but it needed just a little sprucing up.  

While we were 'at it,' I reorganized some of the drawers.  Now all of the cheese, shredded and slices plus sticks, are in one drawer. Tubes of cinnamon rolls and boxes of cream cheese are in the same drawer.  Meats, such as hot dogs and deli ham and deli turkey, are in a drawer.  Those little shelf units on the inside of the drawers were re-organized.  And yes, we do need three bottles of mustard - plain, spicy, and dijon.  

Now granted....the fridge was not as bad as the ones I cleaned out in the old house.  That was always such a challenge, usually a solo job, and one that resulted in my using several trash bags for the pitched items.  

The reason why today's task was much easier?  Because like so many other tasks, I keep up better here than I did there.  The reason?  One is that much clutter was eliminated.  Another reason is more time to do it (translating into no grading to do or lessons to plan).  The big reason - I love this refrigerator and how it looks and the items it can store for us.

The fridge is ready for Thanksgiving.  That was the main reason for the clean out/sprucing up.  I can cross that item off the Pre-Thanksgiving To Do List.

Why today, you might ask?  Why not wait until later in the week or a few weeks from now? 

Answers?  Nail appointment tomorrow so if I am going to chip a nail, now is the time to do it.  Plus tomorrow is trash day!  No trash bags sitting around for several days!

Ta Da!  Done!