Pardon me - I didn’t post yesterday. As I think I mentioned the most important annual Jewish holiday was yesterday and when it was over last night it slipped my memory what day of the week it was. So here I am, a day late and a post short.
As I was talking about last week, much of what one needs to know about organizing we know. It is finding the time and pushing ourselves to do it that is the problem - at least for me. Basically one has to sort through what one has and get rid of what is not being used and will not be used and then set up what is left in an organized manner so that one can find what one is looking for quickly.
What to get rid of? A good question. Some of it is rather obvious - empty boxes of cereal for example. They are garbage. Almost empty box? Depends on how much is left - if you can eat it all while continuing to work - eat it and toss the box; if it is enough for a meal or two - use it up at meals and toss the empty box. In this case I mean for the cereal box to stand for anything which gets used up, but the empty container is still around. This week and last week I made a chicken stew that my husband loves for dinner. Problem is that the garbage pickup is on Monday and Thursday and I was making the stew on Monday last week and Tuesday this week and both times had to hold it all both times until Wednesday night when I put it out for Thursday pick up. The bones, skin and such have to be thrown out, but if I toss them in the kitchen garbage and they don’t go out right away, it will smell terrible. I can take the kitchen bag out to the can outside, but it really upsets me to put the bag(s) out only about 1/3 full. So, I put the chicken garbage into one of those plastic shopping bags that one gets at groceries stores, put same in the bowl I had used to hold the cooked chicken overnight (cooked the chicken one day, made the stew the next) before taking it off the bones and left it in the fridge. When it was time for the garbage to go out I added the shopping bag of chicken icky stuff to it and out it went. I then washed the bowl the bag had been in. I actually have left over stew from both nights. It can’t be frozen as it has potatoes in it and they never freeze well. I have the stews in two canning jars in the fridge (one from last week and one from this). I will hold them until the end of the next week - if husband has not eaten it by then (he really LOVES this stew) then it will go out that Sunday night in the garbage - it will not be allowed to sit beyond when it will be safe to eat.
Staying with the kitchen, some items are harder to get rid of. Husband will decide that he likes something - say a particular canned soup - and buy a lot of it. Then something will happen and it will not be eaten. Say, he decides it raises his blood sugar too much and he should only have it once in a while. The items sit........and sit.........and sit..........and sit.......and sit. Suddenly they are past their date and one cannot even donate them. It really kills me to throw out 6 full cans of something because it passed its date a year or two before - but out they must go. They are taking up needed room and if they are eaten by accident they may make someone ill. I have to check on some eggs we have in the fridge - wait, I will check right now - an entire dozen dated for June 16, 2018. Now what do I do? Normally I would toss the eggs. But here is a bit of info - when eggs pass their date and are sent back to the producer by the stores they are allowed to be repackaged and sent back out a certain number of times - gross right, but it is true. Eggs can be tested to see if they are still good and I will have to find the instructions on how to check them. Okay, per “The Joy of Cooking” if the eggs float in cold water they are no good. I will test them tomorrow and then throw them out if they float. We go through periods where we eat eggs or use them in cooking and will buy them - and then the period of eating them ends - see husband deciding he likes something and then deciding not to have it any more, above - I think he was making quiches with them and then stopped doing so - and they sit. Usually it only part of a dozen, which is left. In case you are thinking - what about breakfast? We wake up so late that we have lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch and then a late night snack for supper, so eggs tend to be more of a dinner food here. I am going to test them..... Well, they will going out Sunday night with the garbage for Monday, the 3 I picked at random all floated - but, on the other hand, I was wrong - there are only 10, not a full dozen. We have a quart of milk in the fridge also. I know that is fresh, we bought it for a meeting of our reenactment unit last Monday - husband had volunteered to bring snack - oh that reminds me of something else, we are going to return an unopened package of cookies - we bought 2 different kinds for the meeting and apparently it was a chocolate mint cookie crowd, not a chocolate chip crowd. But no one opened the milk to use in their coffee. So I have to figure out how to use up a the quart - I guess we will be having diet pudding for snack a few times. We were lucky to find the quart - mostly it comes in half gallons and more around here, and the quart cost almost as much as the half gallon.
So - when one sorts through stuff one will find stuff to toss, stuff to check and decide if it should be tossed - now or soon after, stuff to return, and stuff to use up. If only I had some chocolate syrup for the milk, but if I buy same, then I will have a started bottle of chocolate syrup and someday in the future will be deciding if it should be thrown out or not. (Plus we just plain should not have the extra carbohydrates.)
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
You know that you know what to do. Go through and toss the floating eggs and the long past date things (whether they are actually dated or not) - and the chicken stuff which has been stored until you can toss it. Get rid of the empty boxes or finish up what it is in them and get rid of them. Return items which are in good condition which can be returned. Use up the items that can still be used - before they have to be tossed because they are floating eggs. This applies in the rest of the house as well as in the kitchen - paints and makeup can go past their use time also, for example. The dress you bought for Sally’s wedding a month ago and then bought a different one, that you wore instead - return it if you can or donate it - unless you know that you can wear it for Harry’s wedding next month. And so on.
No comments:
Post a Comment