It’s Thursday, so it’s {pretty, happy, funny, real} day over at Like Mother, Like Daughter, a blog where I find much to respect. (Bloggers, you can join in the fun, too. See the bottom of Leila’s post for instructions about how to link up with your own post about what’s p,h,f,r at your house this week.)
As I often do, I am mixing up the order of the categories to better tell my story. A bunch of us are decluttering/refreshing/cleaning our houses together, and yesterday’s assignment was to clean out the fridge attached to the refrigerator.
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| This is the freezer in my kitchen. The refrigerator is about four years old. I enjoy having the fridge on top a good deal. In summer I enjoy having the freezer on the bottom because when the drawer is pulled open icy air flows out and down over my feet — delicious! Otherwise, a bottom freezer is challenging to use. The top pull-out drawer is a good design, but the bottom cavity makes it easy to lose track of things. |
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| You must know that when you undertake such a job you may find painful memories of past transgressions. I’m pretty sure this is from an unfortunate incident last summer involving a glass of coffee I was freezing into a slushy, frappuccinoesque concoction I enjoy during hot weather. It almost always works, except when it doesn’t. This time, I seem to recall wiping off packages of corn and beans and muttering to myself that I’d deal with the rest later. Well, later arrived yesterday morning. |
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| And here is where we see the results of the mini-cavernous nature of this freezer — the right 1/3 of the pile is comprised entirely of pecans, walnuts, almonds, and pine nuts. I have at least two bags of each kind. I didn’t know. When I think of all those pre-holiday nights I lay awake worrying about my lack of pecans — such a waste.
Toward the right is an un-opened bag of peaches, a partial bag of strawberries, and a bit of diced mango. These are not normally on my grocery list (we eat most fruit fresh in season), but I got them last summer for a 4H cooking class smoothie- making session and here are the leftovers. The thing is, I knew when I tucked them into the freezer that they probably wouldn’t get used. I mean, we don’t even own a blender to make smoothies — I was using a borrowed one for the day. And frozen strawberries just don’t float my boat in other applications. I could have used the peaches in a cobbler or something, but peach season was fast approaching and who’s gonna use frozen when they can use fresh? Sorry, mini-digressive-rant there. |
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| Oh, this is Really Real: Here lie about eight big 2 gallonish-sized ziploc bags. Each as been used with something pretty non-messy, carefully rolled up, and put into the freezer to prevent whatever residue was in them from spoiling so I could re-use them, save the planet, and save our wallet. And I clearly Pretty, Happy, Funny |
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| Here is the finished result, which is pretty, happy, and funny together, because in the photo it doesn’t look that much better than the before pic. It is better — not incredibly better — but better enough to make me happy. |
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| I used a couple each of old Tupperware cereal storers and Modular Mates to categorize the contents of the cavern. I have too many nuts to be corralled in the center left biggest container, but I foresee a nut-heavy round of baking in our near future. I couldn’t bring myself to throw out the fruit, but I have a plan to use it up soon — gonna experiment with smoothie-making with our stick blender.
Today’s assignment:
Pick a drawer or cabinet in your kitchen to declutter, clean, and re-organize. It could be the “tupperware” cupboard, or the under-sink cabinet, or the gadget drawer. Whatever has been bugging you is probably the best choice. Do not, do not, for all that is good and wonderful about being a home manager, decide to pull everything out of everything and do the whole shebang unless:
You can do the whole shebang — my mom and I are living proof of it, but you really, really shouldn’t if you can avoid it. If you need to overhaul your whole kitchen set-up to improve its efficiency, I still believe in my experienced heart of hearts that you will do a better job and enjoy the process much more if you first declutter what you have now. The main reasons are that by putting your hands on every item now you will know better what you’ve got to work with and the time you spend doing a purge first will give you time to spend in the space, working with it and thinking of better and better ideas for how to reorganize it. Also, your enthusiasm and energy will be spread out more evenly and you won’t end up hating yourself, your kitchen, and me after trying to do everything at once. That’s my unsolicited advice, friend.
Work fast, be tough, and have fun! Report back here on your progress so we can all cheer. Isn’t it cool to think of a bunch of people in various parts of the world all climbing half-into their cabinets today to restore a little order and usefulness?
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