A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Fridge and Pantry

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness

It's Day 18 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge at Money Saving Mom and our task today is to clean out our refrigerators and/or organize our pantries. 

Well, I have to tell you, if I had read that "and/or" correctly, I would have had a lot less to show you, because I almost skipped this one, or at least part of it, for the same reason I skipped cleaning my bedroom the first time it came around on the challenge--because it needed it so badly!

The fridge is not too difficult, because it does get cleaned out from time to time, just in the course of cooking and using up things, and periodically right before trash pick up day I'll do a run through of leftovers that may have gotten away from me, or produce that's gone bad. 

That, plus the fact that I love my refrigerator--at just over a year-and-a-half old, it's the newest appliance we own, we paid cash for it, and it was exactly what we wanted--white, bottom freezer, ice maker in the freezer but no ice/water dispenser in the door.  I waited a loooooong time for it, too.

Here's the door before--one of the features I like that I didn't even know I was getting is that the upper door shelves are adjustable--you can slide them out and move them up or down or put the closing one on the bottom, or arrange any way you like. 

Refrigerator door, after.

Fridge interior, before.  Love these slide out shelves, too, they make for easier cleaning.

Fridge interior, after.

This is what I purged, including some bargain flavored cooking cream cheese that I messed around and let expire beyond redemption!

At this point, I almost quit,  I had purged, I had cleaned, I had re-organized, surely enough for one day.  I really planned to put the pantries off and do them on another day, but I was afraid that if I procrastinated on them, they'd never get done.  

So I gave myself a pep talk, and told myself to do one shelf--just one, then stop. Then come back at another time, and do just one more.  Thankfully, once I started, I realized it wasn't in quite as bad shape as I though--it mainly just needed straightening and organizing--which I did, one shelf right after the other!

Pantry one, before. 

Pantry one, after.

The canned goods are several deep, even in the "after".  I think I would love to have one of those can organizers that has everything laying on it's side, and you put the new cans in at the top and the oldest ones roll out the bottom. I'm just not sure if the apparatus itself would take up too much space.  So it's a "maybe someday" item.

I have to say, I was interested in the question a reader posed after Crystal's recent post about her pantry, about where she kept her food.  We live in the deep south, and houses here don't have basements--if we tried to dig one, we'd hit the water table and have a pond, instead!  And heat and humidity affect anything we store in the outside shed or garage, so we have to be careful there as well.  So my pantries stay pretty crammed most of the time!

This is my second pantry, before.  My husband revamped the broom closet at my request a couple of years ago, painting the inside and adding sturdy shelves, so that I could have a little more storage in the kitchen.

And this is after. 

And this is everything that I purged from all three--fridge, and both pantries. 

While I certainly don't want to take a risk with my family's health by feeding them bad food, I don't want to throw away food that's still good just because an arbitrary date stamp may be passed.  I'm old enough to remember when the only foods that had an expiration date was meat and dairy.  According to Stilltasty.com, most canned and packaged items are fine long after the manufacturer's "use by" or "best by" date if it's stored properly, especially if it's unopened.  Apply the sight, smell, and taste test, if necessary.  For cans, are they swollen or rusty--discard immediately.  Does an unopened jar still have a good seal?  Are packed items still in intact containers?  Look at the food itself--do you see signs of discoloration, mold or fungus, bugs?  Definitely discard. Smell it--does it smell "normal", not sour or "turned"?  ?And last but not least--taste a tiny bit--if it tastes "off", by all means throw it away. 

Like I said, I don't want to take a chance, so most of this will go straight into the trash, but there may be a couple of the packaged items that I may try to salvage. 

How did your cleaning go today? Did you have any outdated items?  Are you saving or throwing?

Until next time...

To see other posts in this series, click on Clean in 30