Wednesday, February 28, 2018

High Ambitions Check-In: Day 2

I think yesterday and today were the single most time consuming portions of my list, barring laundry. Somehow today just never found a good groove. Possibly because I used a portion of my productive time (aka Silas's nap) to shower and do my makeup before church tonight. 

But even this morning and early afternoon there were near constant interruptions from my off-spring. Not that those are bad; meeting their needs and caring for them is far above any organized refrigerator for sure! 

Anyhoo, here is a fresh "before" of my work today: the cram-full fridge. We had even emptied some containers of leftovers yesterday for lunch. It really needed some help.


I started by emptying the entire top shelf. Charity helped me carry things from the fridge to the counter. Surprisingly there were only 2 discard items!

A jar of salsa that had gotten lost, and a bit of goat milk that had gone stale. Not too bad for all that was up there!


After wiping the sop shelf and putting everything back in an orderly fashion, I emptied the middle shelf. 

I tossed a random bottle of salad dressing that I'm not sure how we came to have it and we have never used it... so time to get rid of it. Some ancient homemade chocolate syrup and Nutella went bye-bye. Neither one has an eternal shelf life and apparently we don't use them enough for me to make them! (Ok, we could eat more Nutella but I like my pants to fit. Even if they are currently maternity pants!) Some past-their-prime pancakes and leftover veggie mix that I've decided we like fresh but not really leftover (obvious much?). 


Then I clumped together the meat & cheese drawer with the doors. This is where the dinosaurs came out!! Marinade that was eons old and obviously not so wow as to be finished. Tahini from... an embarrassingly long time ago. It looked fine but... I'm not my mom, so it left. Homemade Olive Garden salad dressing that I decided was past it's prime, garlic bread spread that had grown a beard, some of Charity's "snacks" that she puts in baggies to save for later (and forgets), and I purged our fast food condiment collection.


I know the lighting is terrible, but this is my "after" picture. 


What I discovered:
3 open jars of olives
(They are a pregnancy craving I randomly get.)
1 jar of applesauce AND 1 jar of cooked apples. I try to only have 1 open at a time.
3 jars of Bread & Butter Pickles!!! Yes, the fridge had become a black hole, I guess.
2 jars of dill pickles; 1 for eating and 1 for making a beef roast. Adding that to next week's menu!

I also realized I have a problem. I love fresh fruit (not a problem). I have this strange idea that I/we need to ration it out and eat only a little at a time (this is the problem). As a result, we end up with a lot of dried berries. 🙈 I need to get past that mentality and just enjoy the delicious fruit!! Right now I have some aged blackberries that I will probably toss into a cobbler tomorrow.

The doors mostly needed rearranged and put back in order.



We like cheese. :) One of my time-frugals right now is buying sliced cheese. We like quality cheese, but I struggle with old-school, "how I grew up" practices. Not that buying bricks of cheese is a problem! It's not!! But there is nothing wrong with buying sliced cheese, especially when it saves me having to slice umpteen pieces of cheese for sandwiches. (For some reason I'm the only one who can slice cheese evenly in this house. Even Daniel freely admits this.)


So yeah. This wasn't a hugely obvious part of the list. Definitely not a task creating loads of visual progress, but a clean and organized fridge is a nice thing. 

Tomorrow is my last day before our busy weekend starts. My realistic side says to not hold my breath on getting a lot more done. The dreamer, high ambitious side of me says "but most of those tasks except laundry are short, quick tasks" so maybe I can get several accomplished. 

Time will tell! Come back for the third and final recap tomorrow night, or more likely, sometime Friday. 

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