How Often to Clean the Fridge?

I remember that my mom used to clean out the fridge about once every six months...and I was involved in this process as it was a "chore". When I say "clean out", I mean - take out all the food, throw out some stuff, take out the shelves and drawers, wash them down, and wash out the inside. Very thorough. I also remember thinking this was a royal waste of time because it was never very dirty. Conclusion: 2x a year = too often.

This house is the longest I've lived anywhere since I lived at home. While in college and single, I'd live in a place 2 years - maximum, so this "cleaning the fridge" thing hasn't been a thought in my mind since the days of living at home...it would naturally get cleaned every year or so as I would prepare to move and wanted to be sure to get my deposit back.

This past weekend, I discovered that every 5 years is not often enough. Let me tell you, it was disgusting. There are the spills about which you know - and you clean those up as you see they have occurred. But, there are also spills about which you have no idea. How does something spill and the only evidence you have is under the drawer at the bottom of the fridge? This spill goes undetected for...well, perhaps 5 years. Luckily, it is all food and it isn't too tough to clean up, but still. So, as a part of our weekend of organization, I thoroughly cleaned the fridge and it looks wonderful. I love opening it and seeing everything so neat and clean. At this point, there are no bottles and/or jars that contain inedible yuckies and all the shelves and drawers are spic and span. I really had no idea how disgusting the fridge had become. If you have been to our house and thought, "wow, that is one horribly dirty fridge" - thank you for not saying anything to me about it.

Part of the fun of cleaning the fridge is that I got this groovy thing called the Can Around (canaround) for Christmas. You put it in your fridge and it helps you keep the jars and cans organized around the back and edges of the shelves. I'm thinking about getting some for the pantry (I know, I know - those of you who have seen our pantry can't believe how much food is in there) to help organize the shelves.

In other news from our organization weekend - while LJ was visiting Bri and Me...

We did get the guest closet cleaned out and organized. We took several boxes of clothes to Goodwill - where we were turned away. I was shocked, but they had received lots of stuff recently. I refused to take these boxes home again, so we tried a couple of other places, but they were closed. Finally, the Goodwill store in the adjoining town accepted our donation (it is a new store). Then we took 3 boxes of books (from my English lit. grad school days) to Half-Price Books where they gave us more money than I expected to get. Little did they know - I just wanted to get rid of them, so as long as they didn't tell me I had to take them back home - I would have accepted anything. I might have even paid them something. The stuff we kept was organized more neatly into boxes and RJ built some shelves in the closet on which to put the boxes. Now, you can actually find stuff in there! And, we rearranged some things from the guest room into LJ's room and vice-versa. Now the back part of the house is uncluttered and looks pretty nice. It makes me happy.

We did not get to the garage, but that may not be such a big deal. You'll have to wait for a future post to find out why.