Cleaning the Refrigerator

I don't know what came over me Saturday, but for some reason, I felt compelled to clean out the refrigerator. Usually when such a ridiculous compulsion seizes me, I either take a nap or eat ice cream until the urge passes. But with the long holiday weekend and the rain keeping me indoors, I was running out of distractions.

Since I keep an open box of baking soda on each shelf to absorb odors, the chore could have waited another month or two, but procrastination is such an unattractive quality. Don't you agree?  Also, I absolutely love cleaning the refrigerator. It's one of my favorite household chores because of the hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. I get to remove soggy lettuce and limp celery from the vegetable drawer and a couple slices of something from the meat drawer that smell like dead rat . . . or dead turkey, to be precise. If I wait long enough between cleanings, I might even find a fuzzy, green science project in the back corner that defies identification.

I grew up on a farm in central New York. At an early age, I learned that, when you lived in the country, you went to the grocery store no more often than once a month with a list as long as an elephant's trunk. It didn't matter that half of the items would expire long before the next shopping trip. One had to "stock up." Absolutely nothing was allowed to "go to waste."  If the cheese grew moldy, you cut off the mold and made Welsh rarebit. If the bread went stale, you had French toast for breakfast. If the milk passed its expiration date, you made Italian sour cream cake. Rotting fruit was baked into pies or cobblers. Everything else went into the deep freezer in preparation for the inevitable long winter storm.

So, you see, it's hard for me to break with the traditions of childhood. Sometimes I forget the market is only two miles away in any given direction. I can buy fresh produce every day if I choose to. In that case, perhaps I don't need the refrigerator. If I don't use it, it won't get dirty. If it's not dirty, I won't need to clean it. Right? And think of all the money I'll save on baking soda.