Set It and Forget It

Last week I avoided the crowded Y (thanks a lot, all you Be Healthy Now folk who are going there for free, enjoying the facilities and equipment I’m still paying $42 a month for!) and made stuffed peppers. I grabbed my moldy onion, the ground round, an egg, rice and such. But where oh where were my two cans of tomato sauce to pour over my meat mounded veggies of lusciousness? Not in the cupboard, that’s for sure. So I asked the spouse.

"They’re in the fridge," he says. Of course! Where else would they be, right? And by golly, there they were, front and center. They had sat there for 5 days unnoticed by me and it looked like they felt right at home. "I thought you had a reason for putting them in there so I left them," he says. "Well yeah I had a reason - I’m completely nuts!" I proclaim.

What is it about the fridge that makes us subconsciously want to put things in there that don’t belong? Is it because we adorn the outside of it with so much stuff? I’m guilty of adornment. As you can see, ours is coated with pictures, take-out and delivery menus, pizza coupons and old cards - most of which is my doing. Included amidst that is a Time magazine photo of a donkey with a Photoshopped halo hovering over him (it makes me giggle), and one of those random word things that urges you to make sentences in order to celebrate being smoke free (or give you something to do with your hands other than light up). I’m also a magnet freak.

In my opinion, a bare fridge is an unhappy fridge.

True, I have a lot on my mind these days, but chilling Hunts tomato sauce cans? What next, keys in the freezer? Contacts in the egg carton? Shoes in the crisper? And I don’t even have children to distract me. I thought of my Great Grandma Little from Charleroi, Pa. People started realizing something might be wrong with her only when she began to forget how to cook - something she was always great at.

I felt better after being told a friend’s husband, who’s also in his 30s, recently did the same thing with a box of croutons. It’s not that I fear for my health, but the can thing did unnerve me a bit - even more so than walking out the door for work and immediately returning three or more times for different things I’ve forgotten to bring.

So just for fun, amidst these dreary winter days, have any of you left or found anything unusual in your fridge?