Cleaning the Fridge: A Step-By-Step Guide for the Brave of Heart
The best time to tackle this most loathsome and revolting kitchen chore is when you are experiencing a natural serotonin high from some extremely good news. Let’s say your doctor cleared you of your suspicion of early onset dementia. Or the Publisher’s Clearing House pulled up in your driveway. Or your evil ex moved to Uzbekistan. That’s about what it will take to stop procrastinating and propel you through this utterly abhorrent task. So wait until you have extremely good news and then come back here for further instructions.
Congratulations! Whatever it is that brought you back to this guide for cleaning your refrigerator must have put you in one heck of a fantastic mood! You are so happy you won’t mind seeing whatever lurks behind jars, under bottles, and between cartons in your fridge. You’ll laugh in the face of spaghetti sauce so old it is growing hair and a red puddle of dried up something or other that makes your lettuce drawer look like the site of a murder investigation. Just to be on the safe side and keep you this optimistic, turn on some of your favorite music and crack open a bottle of something you like and keep it nearby. Julie Child would approve.
Okay. Now get your rubber gloves, have full bottle of ammonia handy, and fill up the sink with good hot water and sudsy dish soap. Clear off as much space on your counters and kitchen table and computer desk as you can. Chase the cat off the counter and put the plants and spice rack out of the way. You will need a lot of surface space. Do all this before you even open the refrigerator door.
Got that all done? Still feeling happy? Good! Start taking everything out of the refrigerator working your way from the door through every shelf, drawer, hidden drawer, egg holder, butter closet and all the other nooks and crannies. Everything comes out! If your refrigerator has one of those alarms that goes off with the door open, just shut the door as soon as you’ve emptied it because you have some work to do on everything spread out all over your counters before you get back to the inside of the refrigerator. You won’t need to turn off the refrigerator completely unless alien life forms have started growing in there. We’ll be working fast and furiously so keep up! You can place butter, cheese, and even milk and meat in the freezer for the duration of the task if it is warm in your kitchen. If it is cold outside you can place perishables in a box or laundry basket and put them outside your door for the time being.
Next up. Go through everything that you have just removed from the refrigerator. Take a warm soapy washcloth and clean every bottle, jar, package, and container. Now is the time to get rid of that glob that looks like an old chicken gizzard stuck to the ketchup bottle. Now is the moment of truth to tackle those dried rivulets of maple syrup streaming down the Log Cabin bottle. Wipe the fingerprints off the Jif jar and soak the sticky gunk off the Smucker’s strawberry preserves. And don’t forget to clean off the jar bottoms.
This is an excellent opportunity to check the expiration date on everything and dump whatever is past its “best by” date. You’ll need nerves of a meter maid not to give in to any weak-kneed temptations. Do you really want to convince yourself that you actually will use that jar of chutney you bought in Christmas ’07 for that awful recipe you tried to impress your boyfriend with? Wasn’t he the same one you sent packing by New Year’s ’08, anyway? That’s right, it’s high time to toss the chutney too. I don’t even know you, but trust me, you will never again use it and, hopefully, you will choose a better recipe as well as a better boyfriend next time too. Chalk it up as a lesson to be more realistic about your future choices.
At this point your wastebasket should be a rattletrap of cans, jars, boxes, jugs, bottles, and anything else that you are tossing in to it. And God forbid, if you run into any old produce, get rid of it faster than you can say yucky. By now it has to be sprouting a new strain of DNA. Toss it out! After you have completed washing all the contents of the refrigerator and pitching all the old stuff, take a moment to assess if you are still feeling fine. You might have a need to crank up the music volume or take a swig from your nearby bottle. Julie Child would approve.
Now comes the dreaded part. But take heart! You will get through this because now you are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and after all the work you have just done to clean and separate the contents of the fridge, you will not want to put all those beautifully cleaned contents back into a dirty fridge.
Open the door. If you are a woman you have to start thinking like a man at this point because in a few more minutes when you try to dissemble and then re-assemble all those parts, joints, drawers, shelves, and connectors, you will understand why it is that a refrigerator only could have been engineered by a man. If you are a man, on the other hand… silly me, what am I saying?
Okay, Ladies, it’s back to cleaning this crazy contraption. Take each piece out but you must remember exactly how you finagled its removal because it will have to go back in the same way it came out. Do whatever it takes. Draw a sketch of the “before” or even take a photograph with your cell phone. Taking out the pieces and fitting them back in may well require some of your more athletic or acrobatic skills to accomplish. Former cheerleaders and practitioners of Yoga and Pilates and even belly dancers will definitely have the virtual upper leg here, as will former Olympic Medal gymnasts. When you find yourself upside down, twisted backwards, on your side, with one foot pointing to heaven and the other squarely in the dog’s mouth, one arm twisted behind the opposite shoulder and the other arm holding up the door along with your chin, you will have conquered it!
Take each component out and wash in warm sudsy water. Rinse and set out somewhere to drip dry until they are all finished and you can go back and complete the drying with towels. If your table top and counters and computer desk are already occupied with all the clean bottles and jars and tubes and cartons, you might have to move your act to the dining room table, maybe even overtaking the chairs. This is not a job for the squeamish. If it is warm outside you can expand into the backyard and use the picnic table. When your refrigerator is down to three bare walls and a door, dilute the ammonia into water in a spray bottle or just soak a dish towel in it and wash down the inside surfaces. Be sure to wear your plastic gloves for this task and open windows to make sure there is adequate ventilation.
When you have accomplished this much you deserve another nip from your bottle so go for it! Take a moment to step back and admire your handiwork too. After all, it will probably be a while before you get to see a masterpiece like this again.
Now it is time to re-assemble this crazy thing. This is where you will agree with me that only a man could have designed something to go together so illogically. You will agree when you are forced to ponder why they put the door where they did because it is so hard to shove and twist and cram and squeeze cumbersome hard plastic shapes into the impossible spaces and corners and tunnels between the door and where the thing is supposed to go. This part, in fact, may take longer than any other step so be especially patient and kind to yourself. Remember to test the drawers after you re-install them but don’t push too hard lest you break them if they are not reinserted exactly into the guides. The lesson here is that to do reassemble this appliance any faster, it must be done often enough to become second nature through muscle memory.
But eventually it will all fit together and no one can ever take that away from you! You have really accomplished a monumental feat here and you deserve applause, appreciation and boundless affection and admiration from your family. Good luck there. But go ahead, you’ve earned another little sip right about now. And Julie Child would approve.
At the very end, open a new little yellow box of baking soda and place it on a rack in a quiet corner. Then you can finally replace all the newly washed containers in your sparkling clean and fresh smelling refrigerator! You might take this opportunity to re-organize things, too, and even make things easier to locate so you don’t go out and buy another jar of capers when you already have a perfectly good unopened one hiding out behind the Miracle Whip.
You’ve done it! And you should feel proud. Here are two tips. Do this at least once a year, but even better twice. You will remember if you add it to your twice a year “Fall Back” and “Spring Ahead” to-do lists. And above all, prevention is always the best remedy. Just like your own body, it’s best to keep your refrigerator lean and avoid overstuffing it. Buy what you reasonably can use until you go to the store again. You will also make healthier eating and snacking choices if you keep your fridge contents as lean as you keep them fresh.
Hats off to you! You have earned the bragging rights that come after the hard fought battle of cleaning the fridge. Now you can close the door, take a seat, put up your weary feet, and finish off the last of that bottle. Julie Child would approve.
