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May 20, 2004
You Are What You Keep, I Mean Eat
Sometimes our lives are so hectic that before we know it clutter can begin to take over. About a year ago, I was guilty of letting magazines pile up. I have since donated them and honestly haven’t missed them at all. This is true for most things around our homes that we hoard; if they were taken away we wouldn’t really miss them.
I’m not referring to houses where you can easily walk around and everything has its place. I’m talking about those homes where you have to watch where you step or you may get hurt.
While clearing out some of my own paper clutter, I found an article from Good Housekeeping that talks about how long you should keep foods. Some of us are guilty of keeping foods way too long. In our minds, we think that because we spent good money on an item, it should be kept for an infinite amount of time. This way of thinking about anything, not only food, can get us into big trouble.
Here are a few time rules that I found interesting in this article.
In The Pantry: Time Good
* Baking powder/soda - 18 months
* Semisweet chocolate - 2 years
*Unsweetened Chocolate - 18 months
* Coffee - 2 weeks after opening
* Flour - 1 year
* Peanut butter - 2 months after opening
* White sugar - 2 years
* Tea bags - 18 months
In The Refrigerator:
* Sour cream - 2 weeks
* Eggs (in shell) - 1 month
* Pork chops - 3 to 5 days
* Ground meat - 1 to 2 days
* Roasts - 3 to 5 days
* Steaks - 3 to 5 days
* Bacon or hotdogs - 1 week
* Lunch meat slices - 5 days
* Any fish - 1 to 2 days
In The Freezer:
* Bread - 3 months
* Butter - 9 months
* Ice Cream/Sherbet - 1 month
* Precooked meat/fish dish - 3 months
* Precooked poultry dish - 6 months
* Bacon - 1 month
* Hotdogs - 2 weeks
* Roasts - 1 year
* Ground Beef - 1 year
* Pork Chops - 4 months
* Steaks - 1 year
* Nuts - 3 months
* Fruit pies - 8 months
* Vegetables - 1 year
* TV Dinners - 6 months
Know that freezing something does not make it eternally good to eat. Everything should be eaten or replaced within a reasonable amount of time. Go through your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry and if something says that it should have been sold in the early 90’s, that’s a good indication that it needs to be thrown away.
Some people think that I may be a tad obsessive compulsive, but my freezer is almost empty before I grocery shop for more food. The way that I feel is if there’s food in the freezer then we should eat it before we buy more. This same philosophy holds true for my cupboards and refrigerator. So, for the most part, I never have to worry about food being old or dated.
My problem lies with how long I should keep the kids art work and school papers. Can someone please blog about that issue for me?
Posted by tami at May 20, 2004 3:50 PM
Comments
Semi-sweet chocolate...2 years. AS IF! Do you think semi-sweet chocolate lasts longer than, oh, 2 days in my house? Nuh-uh!
Posted by: gw at May 22, 2004 5:03 AM
Ha! Ha! I agree with you GW!!!
Posted by: Tami at May 23, 2004 1:07 AM