The Great Refrigerator Purge

Okay.  The dimensions of new refrigerators are definitely smaller.  But after a good night's sleep and a couple other peeks into my refrigerator, I decided that perhaps I need to clean out and get organized to see what I really needed.

Here's how the frig looked yesterday.  Pretty crammed in and hard to see what I have.  So once I came to grips with what's available today and the price trade offs, I got to work cleaning it out.  I purged open bottles of wine from last holiday season, many leftovers of cheese far past its prime, a moldy jicama, an open half gallon bottle of apple juice (we don't even drink apple juice--I must have used a 1/2 cup or so for cooking at some point), a open jar of roasted red peppers well past their expiration date, a bag of now frozen cilantro at the back of the frig., many open sauces and marinades, a large egg carton with one egg in it (the single egg sits nicely in the container holding my two smaller egg cartons, several ancient partial bags of bread and english muffins).  You get the picture.  I am the only person in the world who allows my refrigerator to get to such a state of disarray? I haven't even be eating a lot of this stuff for the last month so you have a feel for its minimum age.

I'm happy to say that after about an hour of purging and cleaning my refrigerator now looks like this.  Although I'm still a little nervous about the new refrigerator issue, I'm breathing a little easier that I should be able to make it work with a little more regular clean out and purging.  (I'm also currently storing 6 jars of Clausen's pickles that I got on sale. Maybe just a tad more than I needed to stock up on.)  By the way, I'm not drinking orange juice.  I still need to make concessions to the other person in my household who is not on the same diet and whose dietary desires are quite different from my own. (And who re-assured me that we could always move this refrigerator to our garage for emergencies (or parties).

So now that I'm a little more relaxed. I'm off to take another look at refrigerators.