For more than a week I have been thinking about cleaning out my fridge. Not just straightening it--really cleaning it. Looking at, checking every thing in there to see if it deserves shelf space. Scrubbing it down. When I was younger, this would have been no big deal. Well, I'm not younger! And it feels like a big deal these days.
What makes it so tough is that my body is at least as old and unregenerate as I am. I have this more or less perpetual pain in my lower back. And the leg muscles have never quite recovered from the injury I had back in November 2020. So, bending to do most anything is not fun, and, if I try to sit or kneel on the floor, I have to wonder, EVERY time, whether or not I'll be able to get back up.
Case in point: I pulled a little rubbermaid footstool over in front of the fridge so I could really give the bottom shelf a thorough cleaning. That SEEMED better than bending or kneeling or sitting on the floor. But, then, I realized I didn't know how I was going to get up off the stool--it seemed to be at least as challenging as getting up off the floor. In that I am now sitting in my office chair in front of the computer, you can see that I made it, but it hurt and I was, frankly, scared I'd be stuck on that stool forever. Though that bottom shelf is now much cleaner with several science experiments eliminated along the way, I'm still not too sure it was worth it.
There's a goal here: I need to do some canning. And with canning, the most time consuming part is the prep work. You do all this cutting, chopping, etc., and you're pretty darned tired when that is all done. Then you need, sometimes as much as 3 hours for the canner to heat up, process, and cool down. And at the end of all that, there are times I'd rather risk trying to sleep in a straight back chair in the dining room than drag myself off to bed. I've concluded that the solution to this is to prep on one day and deal with the canning the next day. That helps my body but it requires refrigerator space along the way.
For example, I have several packages of chicken to can. I have to cube up all the chicken meat and get it into the canning jars. Okay, prep work done (and my wrist is usually screaming). I will can it up the next day IF I can find space in the fridge for the jars overnight.........So, now you see why I really need to clean out the fridge! But, the goal in the end is to have about a dozen pint jars of cooked chicken stored in a way that does not depend on electricity.
So, on the canning agenda is coleslaw first, meat next. I will have to chop up/shred a couple heads of cabbage, 2 peppers, 2 red onions, and 2 carrots. I'm thinking I will do that with the food processor rather than by hand. That will help prevent wrist problems I hope. And, it will, I hope give me 7 pints of coleslaw that is pre-made and can be pulled off the shelf and enjoyed at will in the coming months.
Anyway, it's time for me to go work on the fridge some more. Middle shelf is up next. And, somewhere along the way I need to take the trash out........
