Purging

We've been purging and I'll be damn if we still have more to purge.

What surprises me is how much crap we hold onto. Especially since we aren't "pack rats" and aren't one's to get all wrapped up into sentimental value. With a lot of things we really don't know how long we've had them. I'm not very good at looking at an item and saying "Gosh, we've had that since "whenever"". I don't remember dates and things like that. That sorta stuff doesn't take up residence in my little brain.

But when something has a printed date on it, there is no denying just how long it has been taking up residence in the refrigerator. It is amazing, way freakin' amazing, how many outdated items we discovered. Too bad I just trashed it all and hauled it to the big ol garbage can.

See, part of preparing for our little weekend away I thought it would be a good idea to clean out the fridge. And like all things with me, it starts out small and ends up being this big massive project. Simply washing off this or that turns into fully dismantling the fridge and doing a thorough cleaning. Yeah, that is a "trait" that undeniably drives Carie nuts! :)

I mean, we have our little routines and whatnot. There may be things in there that we kinda know about, meaning that we know that maybe we should check the expiration date before serving such items to our children. We don't really need to discuss it amongst ourselves. You just know that maybe you haven't used that jar of Mayo in a long time and maybe you ought to check to see if it is still good. With someone else coming into our home how exactly would they know that maybe they shouldn't serve the cranberry Jell-O salad thing that is leftover from Christmas Eve? (Note to self: Remember to take that out of the garage fridge and dispose of it!)

Anyways, while cleaning and purging the fridge I discovered a number of outdated items. Like how in the heck is it possible that this jar of whatever has been in OUR REFRIGERATOR since well before 2005? With an expiration date of sometime in 2005 I’d imagine that it had a significant shelf life prior to that. We are talking condiments here people!

Prime example: Carie found a box of Velveeta cheese in our fridge that expired in 2005. What the hell! I argued that there is no way it could have expired in 2005 since we just bought it and made dip out of it a few months ago during football season. Yeah, football season in 2007. I described my memories to Carie, in full color, and she finally was like "oh yeah, I remember". Seriously, it was impossible. Except, the printing on the package doesn't lie. This is still a mystery to me!

Anyways... So while we didn't have to pack up the kids, all their stuff, and the kitchen sink to go on our little adult vacation, we did find ourselves preparing things around the house for someone else to come into our home to care for our kids. And man, that was a lot of work!

The great thing about it is that we do get to reap the benefits of that work. Heck, clearly our refrigerator won't need another purge like that for 3 years!