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Science projects gone bad

4 min read

Saturdays around here are for cleaning the fridge.

The fact that droves of Saturdays have passed without my doing that should give a pretty accurate image of what the inside of my Whirlpool side-by-side was like.

Last Saturday morning when I reached inside for my coffee creamer and two Trader Joe’s truffles, yum, I was met with a mystery. Was that brown thing on the plate at the back of the top shelf a brownie? Was it a forgotten piece of cake? Oh, dear, let it not be chicken.

Wanting to avoid knowing for sure, I moved my delicious array of flavored coffee creamers out of the way, tossed a paper towel over the suspicious square thing, grabbed it, stuffed it into a blue plastic bag and buried it deep, deep in the trash can. I’ve treated centipedes more gently.

If I’d forgotten an actual brownie, what else could be moldering in the cold depths of the fridge? Creepy, fuzzy things were surely awaiting me in the drawers.

Those carrots I bought way back when I thought about making vegetable soup? Is that what those rust colored things are? Or are they hot dogs? I picked one up and it folded over like a limp noodle. That dark green thing in the far corner of the crisper drawer? My best guess is it was once a bit of kale, now the sad remains of my highly aspirational leafy-greens stage.

Next drawer, the cheese. Shredded mozzarella, grated parmesan, shredded orange stuff that calls itself a Mexican mixture. Science projects, all.

Maybe I should be too ashamed to write about the condition of my fridge, and come to think of it, I probably should be ashamed, but I’m already halfway into my word count for this column. Besides, mine can’t be the only poorly managed icebox, as my grandparents used to call them.

Now to scrub the shelves. Living alone and feeding mostly just myself, my fridge is never very full. I downloaded what I had onto the counters, opening jars to check for shrubbery. I’ve read that tomatoey things don’t grow mold because of all the acid, but I’m here to tell you: that is not true.

One by one I slid out the glass shelves, took them to the sink and wrangled them around to scrub and rinse them. My sink is precisely the wrong shape and size to do this task, which I’ll now use as the reason I haven’t cleaned them before. Off came the crusty and goopy, the bits of grape jelly and the one dried up vitamin B pill (no clue). The scrubbing was taking so long I worried that the food waiting on the counters would be going bad.

Desiccated. That’s one of those munchy words we writers don’t get to use very often, but it’s a good one. At the back of the bottom glass shelf was a container of yogurt, circa summer 2021. Dare I peel back the foil lid? It was desiccated into a hard, cracked block – proof that even yogurt, which by its nature is half-bad to begin with, can go bad if given enough time and space.

By the end of the hour, the shelves were clean and back in place and ready for the food to go back in. The last time I felt that sense of accomplishment was when I sorted my vast and unruly wardrobe of sneakers.

After putting the last bottle of coffee creamer onto the sparkly top shelf, I stood at the open door for a moment, reveling in my housekeeping skills and the spotlessness of my fridge. How very refreshing.

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