This post is part of the “Food Waste Challenge.” Learn more about it here.
Has it been a while since you’ve done a big refrigerator clean out? Without opening the fridge door, can you tell me basically what is in there? If you don’t know what you have in there then you could be throwing away money. Let’s make it a priority this week to really find out what is in there and use it up before it becomes so many mini science experiments.
Off of the top of my head, I just know that there are some things in my fridge that I would rather ignore. I don’t want to throw things out and waste food, but I also might be scared to actually eat some of it. This is because it is has been too long since I took a good inventory of what is residing in my rather large fridge.
For example, there is the family pack of cream cheese that is slightly past its best buy date. I’ll need to make a decision on that. There is the fancy lemon curd that everyone went crazy for for three days and then forgot all about. There may be a bit of pasta or pizza sauce in there as well–all things I should make sure to rotate into our meals this week to avoid waste.
When you do a fridge clean out, make a commitment to use up whatever is starting to overstay its welcome. Do this before you buy any other extras, unless they are absolutely necessary in order to round out the stuff from the fridge. Just don’t be a hero about saving stuff that has gone bad or is on the edge of doing so. No savings is worth possibly getting ill. Scheduling a fridge clean out the night before garbage pick up is a good idea.
Next, make sure that you schedule regular inventory checks. This will prevent the build up of unloved leftovers and other things that are just hanging around.
Next up: What to Do with Expired Food. Look for it in a future post.
Related Articles: