De-Clutter de House: Kitchen Addendum

Today I decided to clean out the freezer. Why, you may ask? Well, a few weeks ago when our friends were visiting and I went to get some meat out of the freezer for dinner, I was astonished to find that most of the chicken breasts I had in there were about 10 months old (some even older!). How embarrassing! I suggested that we go for pizza instead.

So today, with trash pick up a mere 36 hours away and temperatures outside well below freezing, it seemed a good opportunity to get rid of that stuff. It pained me to throw it out, but I knew that it would never be consumed. See, each time I considered using the meat I would take a look at the sell-by date, furrow my brow while debating whether or not it would make us violently ill, decide that it is better to err on the side of caution, and then shove it back in the freezer. Mustn’t throw it out — I paid good money for that!

What nonsense! It isn’t as if it will age backwards! So today I bid all of those frozen chicken breasts a fond farewell and had Dan haul them out to the trash can. (He was a bit distressed to see me throwing away potentially good meat, poor guy.) My goodness, the oldest thing in there was from 2004, and the “newest” was dated March 2006!

After the meat, I threw out all of the things that have been in there so long it’s obvious we will never eat them, even if they do keep forever. Lime ice pops, for instance. Blech!

So, my freezer has now officially been decluttered. I have space for tomorrow’s groceries and I can even see the light when I open the door. Plus I have refreshed my memory of what’s in there, which will help me when it’s time to figure out what’s for dinner.