Whoops, I just wound up throwing out unopened food that I forgot about, wasting money. Don’t you hate it when that happens?
Usually, we are pretty good in this house about cleaning out the fridge and using up items before they expire or go bad. Most Americans throw out about 25 percent of the food that they buy. That is a huge percentage, and I’ve always strived to not be part of that statistic. Our household budget is tight as it is, and the price of food is going higher and higher every moment, it seems, so why waste any of that money?
Life gets away from you, though, and for some reason, we missed one little drawer in our refrigerator. In the back of that drawer were two boxes of cream cheese, unopened, and a small container of sour cream, also unopened. Yikes. Those are items that could have so easily been used in the normal day to day. They also have shelf lives of weeks, so I really have no excuse. Asparagus rotting in the crisping drawer, okay, that is somewhat excusable (although I will have bad produce guilt), but missing unopened containers of stuff we use weekly is kind of pathetic.
Avoiding food waste is a good reason for having a regular time to do a refrigerator check. You can designate one shelf or drawer a day, or do like I do and get the whole thing checked all at once, usually on the night before garbage pick up in case you do find a couple of science experiments in there somewhere.
Don’t forget to check the expiration dates of items that aren’t even opened (like my cream cheese and my sour cream). Anything that is nearing the end of its shelf life should be incorporated into the meal plan for the week.
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