Most of the food dressing like ketchup, mustard, any salad dressing jars or squeeze bottles are stored on the door of the refrigerator. Most of the food-lovers have at least 15-20 kinds of condiments in their fridge. These condiments have a long shelf-life than any regular food in your fridge. However, a question might pop up in your head that storing these condiments for a long time can affect food safety levels.
Here are simple tricks to declutter and clean the condiment storing cans and containers.
- Keep a check on the items you have got
- Remove all the condiments from the refrigerator and line them on the counter.
- Check each bottle, whether you have got a double of anything or not.
- Then, check their expiration date and also open every jar to check their condition.
- If you have two of any, then either combine them or discard the one that smells or looks dicey.
- Then, make a checklist of items you need to purchase from the market.
- Mark the date
- Make sure to mark the date you opened the lid of the new condiments from now onwards.
- You must discard each bottle after three months since you started using the condiment to ensure health safety.
- Arrange them in categories
- Instead of just filling up the shelves of your refrigerator, make sure to arrange them by categories like sandwich toppings in one place, salad dressings at one place, pickles at one place, and so on.
- Keeping them according to categories can help you to easily find out the item you are looking for in the fridge.
- Buy in small quantities
- You might feel that buying bulk quantities can save your money but, there is no advantage of it, except for saving your money.
- It would cost you more, as you have to toss everything out of your fridge, after a certain amount of time.
- Keep track of items you buy seasonally
- Don’t just jump on buying items, which you might already have in your fridge.
- Shopping from seasonal sales might cost you a lot, which might clutter your fridge. Thus, make sure to buy according to your requirement list.
- Toss out everything which you might not require in the future to make space for new condiments.
Note: It might be difficult, but you must at least try not to go out of control during seasonal sale days!
- Make use of special condiments well
- There is a chance that you get tempted to try some new recipes which require some special ingredient, which might end up rotting in your fridge.
- To avoid this condition, try making new recipes using the same ingredient to prevent the wastage of food. You might also end up having a new go-to recipe on your list.
Why must you clean the condiment jars?
Once you have decluttered your fridge, you might not want to place the dirty bottles or jars back in the refrigerator. Thus, it is best first to clean the crusty, drippy, gunky lids and sides of the jars to improve the look of the shelves of the fridge. Also, cleaning them can enhance your overall mood and sense of wellbeing, it might sound weird, but it is true!
These dirty, sticky, and gloomy bottles or containers are unknowingly killing the positive vibe in your fridge and kitchen.
The best way to clean these jars from the outside is by putting them under hot running water (but make sure they remain nicely sealed). Wipe away the drips from the jar of jams, ketchup, and dressings.
