Fridge clean-out

One of my January jobs was to clean out the fridge. I started on this last week after reading a tip on another blog. (Maybe Organizing Made Fun or clean mama, I'm not sure and couldn't find it again.) This mom said she cleaned one shelf at a time. That worked really well for a couple of shelves. Then I ran out of days in January and had to bust my tail yesterday to finish it.

I'm a little embarrassed to post the before pictures but my purpose in creating this blog is to show an honest picture of family life. So, here goes.

Before:

It doesn't look as bad in the picture as it did in person. The door bins were jammed. All the shelves were crusty. The drawers were gross. It needed to be cleaned bad.

Here's one of my first shelves.


Disgusting spills.

That blue is the tape that comes on the fridge when it is brand new. There was also tape on the drawers. I think we've had this fridge six years.

These are all the things I got off the door that were expired.

There are 13 bottles. They took up a lot of space in the door. I am always struggling for door space. We don't really drink here. Two of the beers are from 2008. See the three bottles of chili sauce? I make a dip with it that uses less than a bottle. I make the dip maybe once a year.

Here is the after:

You can't tell as much from the picture as you can in person but this is a clean fridge.

There was one problem with my fridge clean out. I gouged the side at some point.


I don't even know how it happened. I guess it was one of the drawers. Grr.

I moved my shelves around when I put them back in. Before I began, I think they were in exactly the same spots they were in when I got the fridge. When I was checking out other fridge clean out blog posts, I saw one that had the milk on top. I switched mine and liked the way the space worked out. I remember why I don't do that. My top shelf doesn't stay cold enough. My bottom shelf stays in the safe zone on my fridge thermometer while the top shelf sometimes hovers just above it. That's probably not good for any of the food but I feel much more comfortable having the milk where it's always the correct temperature. I'm going to fiddle with the temperature control again and see if I can fix it. But for now, the milk is back on the bottom.