Prep for No More Grocery Shopping - Part 1 - Cleaning Out the Fridge

I know I said next time I'd talk about the master menu, but I had to share today's preparations instead. I paid two 11 year old girls $5 each to clean out my fridge today. I don't know if i was violating any child labor laws, but one of them is mine and has previously been trained on this task, so I knew she could do it. Her friend is also a good worker, so they were a dynamic duo and well worth the $10.

I always forget the before picture, so here they are mid-process spraying out all of the gross stuff in the fridge. I also got a great photo of them washing shelves and drawers in the sink, but since one of them isn't mine I figured I better not publish it till I talk to her mom.

This is the pile of food, minus the stuff they threw away. They wipe down the sticky stuff, consolidated the butters and condiments, decided on new homes for old items and got it all back in a very organized way. they even made a game out of tossing the oldy, moldy stuff in the trash. It was good fun in the kitchen this morning.

Here's the stuff they threw away. We're all ashamed of the wasted leftovers. I'll have a post coming soon to show how to minimize this problem .

This is their stack of clean shelves and drawers. It's precariously perched, but it was clean and dry when they returned it all to it's home.

This is a photo of our sandwich supply drawer and our leftovers tote. I used to keep sandwich stuff in the tote and leftovers scattered throughout the fridge, but then we forgot what we had and couldn't find it half the time even if we remembered where it was, so I'm hoping this new system will cut down on waste.

Here's the finished product. Fridge and freezer clean and reorganized; full but with room for things to come. The inventory was a cinch once everything found its new home. Now I know what I have and what I need for another month of No More Grocery Shopping. As you can see we are doing pretty well and I won't have to stock up too much more with the perishable foods.