IS YOUR REFRIGERATOR RUNNING?
My refrigerator stopped working a few weeks back. Good thing I went to scoop up some ice cream for dessert, that’s the only reason I discovered it before morning. Luckily I’ve got a garage fridge, not pretty but it works, and was able to transfer everything with minimal loss. A repair company was called, a part ordered and an appointment to install said part was made. Nothing left to do but spring clean my now completely empty refrigerator. Let me just say, it wasn’t smelly or dirty… I feel like I need to clarify that, but it’s always nice to take all the shelves and drawers out and give everything a good wash and wipe-down. Twenty minutes after finishing my surprise spring cleaning, the fridge started to work again—about 24 hours or so after it had stopped in the first place. By the next morning it was still working. The part and repair were cancelled. Over the next 2 days, just in case, I slowly started to put things back, but not everything.
It was brought to my attention that I had “Marie Kondo’d” my refrigerator without even realizing it at the time. I was going through jars of condiments, this and that, wondering how long has this half jar of—fill in the blank—been in here? What about the bottle of ketchup, when was the last time I even used ketchup? Is this little jar with 12 capers “sparking joy”? Wait a minute, I have 2 little jars with just a couple capers each. Ugh!
Gone, all you joyless vintage condiments and questionable nearly empty jars. Easy.
Time to confront the freezer. Ohhh, the freezer, not so easy. Let me start by saying freezers are great for stashing homemade chicken stock, keeping frozen peas on hand, specialty flours fresh and of course ice cream, a true necessity in life. They’re also ideal for portioning and freezing soup, sauce, leftovers, breads, the list goes on. I kind of hate my freezer though, it’s very small, very narrow, and because of that can get disorganized quickly if I’m not careful. Disorganized is a generous description of where it was. Disarray, utter chaos is probably more accurate. Tucked in the back behind or buried under more recent freezer acquisitions I found a ziplock bag of homemade marshmallows from 2, maybe 3 years ago, hmmm. Several previously opened bags of frozen peas that only had maybe a quarter to a half cup left and surely freezer burnt at that point. Ice cubes that had been in the silicone tray so long they had almost entirely disappeared, amazing! Then there were the ziplock bags of chicken backs I’ve been collecting (yes, I collect chicken parts) to make stock, and a few miscellaneous other things like a vacuum sealed ham bone whose age I’d rather not say.
Just like the caper jars and ketchup, the multiple opened bags of ancient frozen peas, old marshmallows and cookie recipe experiments—yeah, found several of those lingering in there—also got Kondo’d. The frozen chicken backs are going to stay in the garage freezer until it’s their turn to become stock… it’s really a better place for them, a little too bulky for my narrow freezer they were encroaching on prime ice cream real estate.
It’s quite nice to open the refrigerator and have room to put something without having to rearrange a whole shelf every time just to fit it in. The freezer, I only need to open the door to know what I have, no more digging around and having frozen things tumble out, inevitably landing on my foot. Now, in the same spirit, if I can just get to the closet in my office…