I don’t know about you but I despise cleaning out the refrigerator (and freezer). I don’t know why because my refrigerator is smaller than most and it really doesn’t take that much time. However, it’s just one of those tasks that is easy to keep putting off.
In any event, I decided to finally buckle down and get it done!
Starting Point
As you can see, my refrigerator is on the small size. What this means is that I can shove stuff to the back and forget about it. It also means that I often end up piling things on top of one another.
Cleaning Out
I’m not proud to show this but it’s real life. The picture on the right is one of the drawers.
Organization
It didn’t take me a ton of time to pull everything out. Cleaning the liners and the shelves took longer than taking the food out.
I use liners to keep the gunk off of the actual shelves and it works. They are easy to clean when something spills. It’s funny because the “liners” are chopping mats from the Dollar Tree. I’m not sure that you could chop anything on this mat and not have it get totally cut up but they work great as liners in the refrigerator. And there are two mats in each package for $1.25.
All Done
It’s not Pinterest pretty but I know where everything is and nothing is expired!
Freezer Clean Out
I wasn’t going to do the freezer but I decided to not be lazy and just get it done. Again, it didn’t take very long and it needed to be done.
As you can see, my freezer is super small as well. I cannot fit much in here so I have to be smart about how I use the space. The good news is now that it’s cleaned out I can actually see what I have and use that information to meal plan.
Just an FYI-I did not do the doors because I have actually cleaned it out more recently.
Lessons learned: Cleaning out the refrigerator and/or freezer does not take very long. I believe I got both done in just over an hour. This is something that I’ll need to remember when it’s time to clean the refrigerator out again. Seems like this is a task that needs to be put on the quarterly to do list!
How often do you clean you refrigerator out? Share in the comments.
Happy to say we are so boring with our food we don’t need to clean out food as it all gets used daily. I wipe up stuff when I see it in the fridge so a clean out is only if there’s a huge spill. But the freezer needs occasional cleanings since stuff falls to the bottom pretty regularly 😢