"Leftovers make you feel good twice. Did you ever think about that? Leftovers give you two separate, good feelings. When you first put them away, you feel really intelligent: "I'm saving food!" And then, after a month, when hair is growing out of them, and you throw them away you feel really intelligent: I'm saving my life!"
- George Carlin, from "Ice Box Man" a routine from the album "A Place for My Stuff"
It's come to that time again for doing a heavy-duty cleaning of the fridge. And this time, yikes. I threw out at least a full trash bag of stuff that had expired. I think the oldest item was a bottle of mojito mix that had been sitting on the top shelf way in the back left corner. The expiration date? Two years ago! But the crazy thing about that is, I know I've been in my present apartment for less than two years, and I know I bought the item earlier than that.
Here are a couple of things I learned or re-learned from the experience:
- You know how refrigerators have one or two draws in the bottom? And usually, you can't see through them? Sometimes they're called the "crisper" or are labeled with categories like "Vegetables". I've said this before, and I'll say it again: it's generally a stupid idea to keep vegies in there. That's because what happens is you forget that they're in there, and they just rot. My suggestion? Use this draw for the stuff that doesn't really expire, like soft drinks. Or you could use it for the stuff you might use often, but draws like this are generally a pain in the ass to open. Yet another thing you could do, at least with some refrigerators, is pull the draw out entirely and use the space as a shelf.
- A while back I did declare it as a rule for my wife and I: "Don't put fruits and vegetables in the draw. We won't see them, then forget about them!" I guess what happened though is that after some shopping trip or another, we ran out of room with the other shelves and decided to throw some stuff down there. Well, this time around I found two oranges, and you could squeeze them like a Nerf ball. I'm no botanist, but I know that means they're bad.
- Some of the things I threw out were items that we had two or three of. For example, two containers of the same type of cream cheese, both open. Or three different kinds of coffee creamers, all expired. I guess my fridge is a microcosm of the general bigger problem that shows up when you're a pack rat: buying two or three of the same item because you forgot you already had it, and just didn't see it (or gave up looking for it). All the more reason for basing your shopping list partially on what you really don't have at home, and sticking to the shopping list and only what's on the shopping list when you shop, I suppose.
- With the previous observation in mind, it helps to clump similar items in the fridge the best you can. I noticed that we had the yogurts spread out in 3 different places. Again, this seems to be a microcosm of the bigger clutter situation: throwing things in the next available space instead of organizing them together.
- By the way, why is there no "d" in "refrigerator", but its abbreviation is "fridge"? Go try your spell check if you don't believe me.
