Cleaning Challenge: Expiration Expulsion

When I was helping my beloved clean out his apartment and put everything in storage, we ended up throwing out two 13 gallon bags of expired food from the pantry and fridge.  In his defense, being in the Navy means not always being around to eat things before they go bad.  I have no excuse for my own fridge except that I hate cleaning out the fridge.  I ended up cleaning out his fridge in stages over a period of about a month because in addition to the expired food there were dozens of plastic containers; I swear they were breeding because every time I thought I'd got the last of them I'd find another one.

Throwing out expired stuff can give you more room in your fridge/pantry and it's not as scary as tackling the mystery foods in plastic containers, so this is the assignment for the week!  Go through your fridge, freezer, and pantry and toss out anything that's past its expiration date.  You might be tempted to keep food that's expired but I would caution you not to.  There's actually no such thing as "stomach flu".  If you've ever been sick to your stomach you've probably had a case of food poisoning.  It can be dangerous for adults but deadly for children or the elderly so it's not worth keeping food around if it's suspect.

You might be tempted to keep around stuff in the pantry like baking mixes, but those use chemical leaveners which lose their effectiveness over time and you could fail to rise.  While things that are kept in a perfect sub freezing environment will last indefinitely, your freezer is not a perfect sub freezing environment.  For one thing, you open and close the door almost every day.  For another, your freezer uses a thermostat similar to the one for your heat or a/c.  It goes off and on as the temperature rises and falls which causes food to freeze and thaw repeatedly.

Some day I'll get around to writing an article about how to prevent yourself from wasting food, but for now let's just get rid of anything that's not good.  While you're at it, if you have any boxed or canned goods that are still good but you know you'll never eat, put them in a bag and drop them off at the food bank.  Your grocery store might even have a collection bin to save you a trip.