Cleaning The Fridge

Does anyone else love cleaning out their refrigerator? When I am really stressed out, or feel frustrated, I clean out the fridge. Other people obviously do too, as there are videos on Instagram of people restocking their fridge using clean bins and compartments.What is it about doing so that relaxes us?

Maybe because we look inside of the fridge so much. Maybe because there is something innately human about ensuring that we have food to eat and it is safe. Maybe it just something about who we are as people. Growing up our fridge was always stuffed with food because there were four of us kids. The light bulb was burnt out, stuff expired without anyone noticing, and things spilled without anyone cleaning them up. Cleaning that fridge was a nightmare, but it was the job I always did because I liked having a clean one. Even before my mom died, I’d visit her condo and go through her fridge and pitch her expired food. My mom, God bless her soul, was notorious for messy refrigerators.

Even today when I go over someone’s house and notice their fridge is dirty my opinion of them changes. A dirty fridge means they don’t pay attention to detail. It means they don’t care. Although there are a million different reasons why, maybe they’ve been busy, maybe they just went shopping, whatever, it is an eyesore to me. I do not know why it bothers me so much. Maybe everyone has something? I am sure there is something about me that does the same to other people. There’s always things we’re not aware of that incite people’s personal prejudices.

I also think fridges should smell good. When you open someone’s fridge and you get a rank smell, that puts me off. I will find the offending food, pitch it, and then do everything in my power to stop myself from not going further and scrubbing it down. In fact, I’m so weird about it that when I go over people’s houses I bring my own cooler so I don’t have to go through their fridge. I mean, it is a personal space isn’t it? Like someone’s closet or drawers, should a fridge be off limits to visitors? Sometimes I think so and that maybe we’re better off with me not knowing how you arrange your food. Whenever I visit my club I do the same. As soon as I’m in the clubhouse, I walk past the fridge and if it has crap in it I pitch it. It is gone. Then I make a big deal out of that people are leaving shit in the fridge and forgetting about it. We don’t need any more mice than what we already are dealing with, am I right?

Another thing that bothers me are the cleanliness of cars. Someone with a messy automobile interior to me is a joke. I’m not talking about a car that needs a good vacuuming because they have kids, but ones where there is trash piled up to the ceiling in it. Like, why can’t you use a garbage can at the gas station? Next time you fill up, empty the crap out of this car for real! If I see a messy car I assume their lives are as disheveled as their surroundings. See, this is a personal prejudice that might not have any correlation to real life, but I think it does. I often think that really, really messy cars is a sign of un-diagnosed mental illness. It’s possible that person is suffering from depression and doesn’t realize it.

So, next time I visit, I’ll bring my cooler