The Kitchn Cure Day 4: Cleaning the Freezer (Rummaging Around, Clearing Out & Throwing Away)

Dana Velden
Dana Velden
Dana Velden's first book, Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook (Rodale Books) is available where ever books are sold. She lives in Oakland, CA.
published Sep 10, 2015
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Perishable food products, including yogurt, frozen food, are kept in one side of the refrigerator
How To Clean The Freezer (Image credit: Gina Eykemans)
(Image credit: Henry Chen)

The Kitchn Cure Day 4: Sort through your freezer’s expired items.
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Today is going to be a (somewhat) light day. We’ve earned it! If you clean your refrigerator on a regular basis, the past few days may have been a breeze. But most of us don’t do this nearly enough, so it’s possible that what we’ve just done is a huge accomplishment. Congratulations! The best way to celebrate this is to take it easy, so our task today is minimal.

Today we’re going to spend a few minutes sorting through and clearing out our freezer’s various tired and expired items.

We’re not going to take on the whole freezer in one day. Instead, just like the refrigerator, we’re going to do it in two sessions. For today, we’ll just pull out and deal with the old, expired, and no-longer-desirable things lurking in the depths of our freezer. So jump right in and be a little ruthless while you’re at it, especially when it comes to freezer burn, which you should school yourself on if you’re not already familiar with this very unfortunate occurrence.

Today’s Assignment

  1. Sort through your freezer and pull out everything that’s freezer burned, expired, or questionable. Toss the freezer-burned stuff, as it’s beyond help.
  2. Move on to the expired and questionable things. Pause for a moment and consider whether you have tonight’s meal in front of you? Maybe … or maybe not. (Read more:

    5 Recipes to Help you Clear Out Your Freezer

While you’re at it, and without submitting to guilty feelings, take a closer look at all of your “freezer fails.” What happened? Did you buy something you really didn’t like? Did you forget you had it? Were you too ambitious or a little overzealous when it came to quantity? Again, we’ve all been there, so no judgments. Just note what happened so you can change what’s changeable next time around. And let the rest of it go.

For tomorrow, be sure you have plenty of freezer containers, labels, and a Sharpie on hand.

(Image credit: Henry Chen)

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(Image credit: Dana Velden)

Find Dana’s Book:

→ Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook by Dana Velden

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