Week 1: Fridge & Freezer Clean-up

Today's zone for the 91 Day De-Clutter Challenge was the fridge and freezer!

OK.  I know I've said it before, but we haven't been here all that long, so I didn't think I was really going to have to do much of anything for today's challenge.

However, I was surprised - when I took a really good look, I found something had spilled under the cheese and vegetable crisper drawers at the bottom of the fridge.  Since I was pulling things out anyway, I hit that while I was in there.  It worked out nicely because whatever it was didn't have time to get all fuzzy and horrible-smelling.  (Don't you hate that?  Eww.)  Here's an overview, followed by closer shots of what I did (I know, it doesn't look like a huge difference.  Trust me, it looks better than it did, and it will be way easier to find things now!  Also, please excuse how dark the top half of my fridge is - the light bulbs have been burned out since we moved in, but we haven't gotten around to buying replacements yet.  I'll try to do that during Kitchen Week!)

I did find a few things more than I was expecting that needed tidying up.  We had a couple sauces that my mom had given us that were out of their expiration dates.  Some cherry tomatoes and half a cucumber were beginning to get rather mushy in the vegetable crisper.  I had a can of frosting left over from Nate's Minion birthday cupcakes that wasn't going to be used any time soon.  There was an opened can of Coke shoved way in the back that's been there for probably a week or so (ew, super-flat).  Speaking of super-flat pop, I cleared out a two-liter bottle that had been in there with only a few sips left for at least a week or so.  There were a couple small things of leftovers that had been in there for more than a week.  So here are the before and afters:

We have shelf liners already in place to catch future spills.  And that shapeless blob on the shelf below the milk is a defrosting package of ground beef, I promise!

While I was working on the fridge, I took the opportunity to reorganize the shelves on the door a little bit.  The butter still lives in its little butter compartment, of course.  We have a kid's-stuff bin (grape jelly, chocolate and strawberry syrups, applesauce), a bin for pop, a bin for water right below that, a bin of our most-used condiments (mayo, ketchup, Ranch dressing, spicy brown mustard, relish, bacon bits), and the bottom shelf is now for all those condiments we don't use that frequently (taco sauce, Parmesan cheese, stir-fry sauce, plain yellow mustard, BBQ sauce, etc.).

Yes, I had two things of chocolate syrup - actually, the old one got used up about an hour after the photo, so now I don't anymore!  Hooray!

The freezer...well, I really didn't have much to do there.  It's pretty bare because we're almost at grocery day (tomorrow, thank goodness - we have almost no meat left in the house!).  In fact, it's a little emptier now than it was when I took the photo this afternoon because we ate the pizza for dinner.  (And the other mini-freezer we have for buying bulk meat and freezing it is literally completely bare.)  LOL  The only thing I really tossed was a very freezer-burned Ben & Jerry's pint of pistachio ice cream that had been in there since we moved.

That's an over-ripe banana awaiting mates to be made into banana bread and two ice packs for the kids' lunch boxes on the bottom shelf!

So.  While I don't feel like I accomplished a ton today, I am glad that I caught that mystery spill and got rid of some produce that was on its way out!  I also like the rearrangement of the fridge door - I've actually been meaning to do that for awhile.  Water bottles were always falling over on the bottom shelf, so you could never tell if there were any in there or not.

This was a nice way to ease myself into the challenge, I think.  I'm looking forward to what comes next!