Small and orderly

I’ve done a lot of projects in this house since moving day on January 22. 2020. Most of those projects haven't been particularly big, but a few have been very small. This month, I completed another small project—sort of accidentally.

Back in February I spent about a week on some very small projects, which I mentioned here only in June when I completed another small project: Installing a shaving mirror in the en suite. My ptoject this month was a little more involved than that mirror: I reorganised my fridge (Before and After photos up top).

The project actually technically began back in May when I bought an acrylic turntable with sides to store bottles in my fridge. I knew I needed to wash it before I put it in the fridge, and I didn’t get to that. Then I moved it to the other side of the kitchen to get it out of my way. Then, of course, I forgot all about it, as I so often do.

I decided to have the Hamilton family around for dinner on Friday, September 20, since it happened to be the fifth horrible anniversary since Nigel died. I knew I’d be fine, but it seemed like getting together with the family was the best thing to do on that particular day.

However, my house was a disaster area, the living area in particular, because of the stuff I brought in from the garage as part of the latest incarnation of that project, which I wrote about back in July. Getting the house ready meant clearing out all the stuff (and also sparked a new approach to the garage project, a whole topic on its own). I spent a couple weeks working on it a bit at a time, and when I was working in the kitchen I finally saw the acrylic turntable. I washed it and left it to dry while I started on the inside the fridge.

First, I took everything off the two top shelves, then removed the glass shelves so I could wash them in the sink. I don’t think I’ve done that since my niece cleaned them the day I moved in (to be clear, when I have spills, which is rare, I clean them up immediately, and I have wiped the shelves from time to time; it’s just I haven’t taken them out to wash them). The lowest shelf it too difficult to remove, so I cleaned that in position.

Next, I went through everything I’d taken out (and what was on the door) to see if there were any science experiments, and there was one: A jar of something or other at the back of a lower shelf, in a spot difficult to see unless I bent over, and I found som some rearly sold raspberry jam that had become solid. There were some chutneys and relishes that smelled fine, but I was pretty sure they’d been in the fridge since before Nigel died. I emptied them and washed the jars and put them in the recycling that week.

I put the new acrylic turntable on the top shelf, then basically put things back where they had been. There wasn’t enough room to put the old lazy susan on the top shelf, so I put that aside while I carried on with the rest. A day or two later, I decided to put the old lazy susan on the second shelf, and I’d put the remaining chutneys and relishes, along with jam, onto it—but only after I took everything out again so I could raise the top shelf one notch so the old lazy susan would fit on the second shelf.

This, then, created a new problem: The moved top shelf was too high to fit the milk bottle on it. At first I laid it on a shelf, but I quickly found out the cap wasn’t tight enough to prevent it leaking. Actually, I found it out twice, because the first time I thought maybe I hadn’t tightened the lid enough. That wasn’t the problem.

The milk is now on the door, a place I stopped putting it because I saw a “food safety expert” on TV saying the door was too warm for milk. I also switched from a 3-litre bottle to a 2-litre bottle, which I go through faster, and so, it’ll have less time to go bad. Hopefully.

An unexpected bonus was that the second shelf now has enough vertical space that I can have a dozen eggs on top of another dozen eggs. I usually buy a new dozen when when I’m down to my last few, so it’s not uncommon for me to have two cartons in the fridge at once.

My fridge is now the most organised its ever been, the elderly products are gone, and I even ended up with lots of empty space, even though there’s actually not a dramatically smaller amount of stuff in there: It’s simply better organised.

The project started because I was tidying up the house for the family, and it ended up giving a clean, organised fridge. Everybody won! I may not have planned to do that project, but I’m glad I did it. I’ll take it as a good omen for my other projects to come.