Staying on top of things can be challenging, especially when it comes to the kitchen and maintaining the fridge. ‘Stuff’ creeps in on a daily basis and if we are not mindful, chaos can reign before we’ve had time to take stock.
This can easily happen in the fridge. I have 3 simple tips to help make it easy to maintain.
A friend reminded me how quick and easy it is to let the fridge get out of control. We were cooking dinner together and I reached into the fridge to retrieve the tomatoes only to find them all squishy with bits of mould on them.
Turning around and seeing the tomatoes, my friend said ‘oh no not those, they are old and need to be binned. I’ll get them; I know where the fresh ones are’.
My friend’s routine was to nip to the shops after a long hard day at work, throwing the ingredients into the fridge wherever it would fit. Can you relate? I know before I taught myself to be organised, I would often do this.
With multiples of produce all in different locations of the fridge, finding the freshest becomes a memory game.
And it creates a lot of work! Every few weeks, the scourer, rubber gloves and commercial strength cleaner was used to clean the fridge and remove unrecognisable produce and uneaten meals way past their use by date. Ripping off the gloves, wiping the sweat from their brow, my friend was always so happy by the result and vowed to never let it get like that again…but it did.
While we could have a light-hearted giggle over this with wine later, it was costing my friend a lot of time and money.
3 Simple Habits to Help Maintain your Fridge:
- Find a time to plan your meals, check the fridge (and pantry) for what needs to be used up and then make a shopping list.
- Use this time to throw away any out of date items.
- If you purchased more of something you already have, put them together with the oldest on top or in front of the newer product. Using baskets in the fridge makes it really easy to keep like minded items together.
Take a few minutes to do this and you will be saving your future self (and family and friends) a lot of time and effort.
Maintaining your fridge is different from organising your fridge. Check out my top 5 tips for cleaning your fridge here.
Don’t delay, start today
Sara
