Advertisement
Your fridge is the centre of your kitchen, possibly of your home, but it’s not always a nice place to visit.
There’s little worse than lifting up a bag of carrots in the crisper drawer to find a soggy bag of ‘salad’ or a wilted, mouldy cucumber still in its plastic wrapping. We’ve all been there, and none of us wants to return. So here are some fridge-organising rules to help you. Spoiler alert – some are mutually exclusive, so you have to choose which system will work best for you.
Tape and Koki pen
The simplest place to start getting organised is with a roll of tape (masking tape is unglamorous but works well) and a Koki pen. The expiry dates on milk, yoghurt and other dairy products are hard to read, so rewrite them in big, bold letters – either on tape or directly on the container. When you buy a tub of something, label it with the date you bought it, line up any duplicate items with the newest in the back, and if you put time-sensitive leftovers in the fridge, give them a brightly coloured label and put them where you can see them easily. And that brings us to the next point.
Out of sight, out of mind
Yup. Back in the day, your mom told you that veggies belong in the crisper drawer, so that’s where you put them. And then they are – yes – out of sight. So what you see when you open the fridge is half-full bottles of condiments, pickles and jams, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese, chicken, meat and … I’m not sure what that is but I’ll open it when I’m hungry and can’t find anything else. So there is an ever-growing body of thought that veggies do not belong in the crisper drawer. They belong at eye level. Also, depending on how you buy your veggies, they really, genuinely, do not belong in the crisper drawer (you can hear your mom gasping in horror but see below). So, fill that dark hidey hole with things that will not expire for ages, like condiments, pickles, jams, nuts, chocolate, flours, and unopened, vacuum-packed hard cheese, and put your veggies at eye level, either on the shelves or in the door.
But the crisper drawer is designed for veggies …
True. Crisper drawers are cleverly designed, but they are only as clever as the people using them. Crisper drawers work because they are more humid than the rest of the fridge. Some fridges have adjustable crisper drawers so you can choose between high humidity and low humidity, but some are just all high humidity. So, using them properly is quite a science, but most people just chuck the veggies in there – even prepackaged salad leaves and pre-chopped veggies in their own, beautifully designed, humidity-controlled packaging.
If you buy unpackaged veggies, or – even better – grow your own, then it’s worth using them. The high humidity drawer is to stop things wilting – like lettuce, courgettes, carrots, kiwi fruits and other thin-skinned produce. Spinach can go in there, too, but Swiss chard is much better off in a pretty jug of water on the countertop like a bright green floral arrangement. (That’s also the best way to store basil, as it always turns brown in the fridge if you keep it for more than a day.) So, yeah, use the crisper drawer for veggies, but do your homework and do it properly. Otherwise, it’s just a place where bags of lettuce go to die.
Advertisement
Meat, fish, and chicken
Raw meat, chicken, and fish should be very carefully stored because these can easily contaminate other foods – liver-flavoured yoghurt, anyone? Ideally, keep them individually sealed in glass or plastic containers with the expiry dates clearly market. And they do best near the bottom of the fridge, where it’s coldest. You can even reserve one of the crisper drawers for it, if you’ve converted to non-crisper veg storage.
Consciousness and care
Kohei Watanabe and Tomoko Okayama, waste management researchers at Teikyo University in Tokyo, did an intensive study of food waste in a high-rise apartment building called Sky Heights. They studied the underlying causes of fridge clutter and used the insights to come up with some almost KonMari strategies and techniques for controlling waste. And, much like Marie Kondo’s techniques, theirs is a disciplined approach that emphasises conscious consumerism and conscious waste management. They utilised the tape and Koki pen method described above, giving participants tape, open-topped transparent containers and other goodies to help organise their fridge, and they emphasised keeping soon-to-be expired food highly visible. But humans are fallible, so you could still end up with inedible food in your fridge, and it’s how Watanabe and Okayama dealt with this that sets their study apart. As well as the other tools, they gave participants beautifully printed stickers depicting two people holding hands with the words ‘I cannot eat you. I’m so sorry’, and encouraged people to put one of these stickers on anything they had to throw out. It’s all about being conscious of your actions because, as Okayama says, ‘noticing is very important.’ Follow-up surveys showed that 77% of participants said they used the plastic trays, 18% used the stickers, and 13% used the tape, and the reduction in food waste was calculated to be about 20%.
Localise it
We don’t live in Japan. We have more space, but we also have a very different economy, so we should consider local conditions before applying the techniques. For example, unsalvageable food can be composted, either individually for your own garden, or as an estate-led activity. Another option that is great for apartment dwellers is Ladles of Love Feed the Soil. It’s only in and around Cape Town so far, but you could motivate for starting something similar in your area.
Also, sadly, you probably pass many people who are – literally – almost starving on your way to work in the morning, or to taking your kids to school. So check out that ‘needs to be eaten soon’ shelf and salvage perfectly good food before it goes off. Package it neatly with love like you do with your kids’ school lunches, preferably not in plastic, and perhaps add a piece of fruit and a biscuit or juice. Keep it in the car with you, and give it to someone who needs it. In a perfect world we would not do this, but it’s a whole lot better than saying, ‘I cannot eat you. I’m so sorry.’
