I don’t feel like I buy a lot of condiments, but somehow my fridge shelves seem to be full of them nonetheless. When it’s something you don’t use very often like sambal oelek or mint jelly, it’s hard to keep track of when you opened them and exactly how long they’ve been there. While many of them don’t have expiry dates, I don’t relish (pun intended) the idea of using condiments that have been sitting there for years.
Recently, I came up with a new system using my beloved Sharpie. It’s pretty simple—when opening a new condiment, I mark on the top of the bottle with the month and year (e.g. May ‘11) so I have a simple way to keep track of when I bought and opened the new addition to the legion of condiments in my fridge. In fact, we even got a great reader tip on this topic as well.
If you like to keep track of how old your pillows are (dust mites do kind of freak me out), you can also employ the same system, marking the label of the pillow when you first begin using it.
If you really want to challenge yourself one week, try picking a different recipe each night that requires one of the less-frequently used condiments in your fridge. You’ll free up some space and surprise your family’s taste buds!
Do you have any kitchen organizing tips? I would love to hear them.
Comments
So simple yet so clever, practical and useful!! Thanks! Now, to figure out how old those opened jars in my fridge are? hmmm…
Good point, which I should have addressed in my post…for those already opened jars, when I implemented this system, I just tried to guesstimate the open date and when in doubt assumed they had been open about 1 year.
That’s a fantastic tip, but now i need a list of how long said condiments can be safely kept once opened in the fridge….without an expiry date stamped on, i’m often left wondering how long to keep things like worschetire (i can’t spell!) sauce or even ketchup!
Post a Comment
Our Commenting Policy
Manners are important to moms. So it won’t surprise you that at SavvyMom Media we try our best to keep the discussion respectful. While we hope you will share your thoughts in the comments, we ask that you keep it clean. Please avoid all profanity, derogatory terms, advertising/spam, and unsubstantiated personal attacks. If you see a comment that you feel is abusive, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
We promise not to delete your comments unless they violate these terms, though we sincerely hope we won’t have to make that decision. For more detail on our commenting policy and procedures, please see our complete Community Guidelines