Well, this weekend hasn’t exactly gone as planned. Eric and the boys are enjoying a brunch with family at my mom’s house right now–but I am sick at home. I woke up on Thursday with the slightest tickle in my throat and by Friday it was a full-blown cold. I/we had to skip library story time with friends (K was still sniffling), coffee with my dad on Friday and now brunch. Blergh.
Despite the sickness, we’ve been extremely productive. We started Saturday morning by taking all the shelves and drawers out of our fridge, scrubbing them until they sparkled, wiping down the inside of the fridge and shining the outside with stainless steel cleaner. We threw out a bunch of half-used and expired items too. Then we headed to the grocery to restock.
It is blissful peering in there and seeing the clean shelves stocked with fresh produce, chicken, eggs, yogurt, cheese, and milk, and only the good condiments remaining.
In fact, as soon as we were finished cleaning–and I had taken a picture of course, how could I not document that beauty?!–I went up to my room to finish getting myself ready for the day. I found myself picking out a nice top to wear with my jeans and taking the vitamins I often forget to take, too.
This got me thinking about all of the benefits of a clean fridge!
6 Benefits of a Clean Fridge
- Obviously, the health and food safety benefits. No one likes pulling a vegetable from the crisper and finding that it’s covered with bits of old dried veggies and goodness knows what germs. Yuck!
- I fill my fridge with wholesome, healthy foods to match its new aesthetic.
- I’m inspired to food/meal prep and turn all that wholesome food into delicious pre-prepared dishes in glass storage containers. Who doesn’t love opening the fridge on a Monday morning and seeing that you’re set up for an easy, healthy week of eating!
- I use up foods instead of buying new from the store. In preparation for our cleaning, I planned a few meals to use up what we had instead of buying new. For example, I wanted to put Parmesan in our scrambled eggs. But, we used up the end of a block of cheddar instead of buying Parm. Once the fridge is clean, it makes me want to continue with that thriftiness and not amass a backlog of old, undesirable food.
- I feel better about hosting people. You don’t want to have people over to eat and then they get a glimpse of your fridge and think yuck! This food came from there? I like to live a life where the inside matches the outside, physically and mentally.
- I feel like up-leveling my life in other areas. I’ve found that the effects of decluttering/deep cleaning are contagious between areas of my life. If I streamline my wardrobe, I want to declutter my makeup/skincare to match. If I have a gorgeous, healthy fridge, I want to dress to feel like I’m that type of elegant woman.
I’m already getting excited about finishing the pantry clean/declutter I started last week. Eric and I have vowed to deep clean the freezer next weekend too 🙂
Even if we’re far from spring here in Minnesota… I can make believe and work on my spring cleaning and cooking right now.
What cleaning/decluttering projects have you got up to lately?
xx Claire
P.S. Curious what we usually stock in our gluten-free fridge and pantry? This post from a few years back is still fairly accurate, except that we eat meat 3-4 nights per week now (my kids aren’t fans of legumes). I might update it soon to reflect the kid-friendly changes we’ve made in recent years!
