When you have children, you accumulate a million little plastic containers. They are annoyingly small and unstackable. There are a huge number of them, but you can never find one because they're all in the fridge.What happens is, there's a couple of spoonfuls of left-over mash and seven peas, and where you would have thrown them out in the past, you now go 'oh, the kids might be able to have that some time'. Sounds wise and thrifty, but firstly, the kids didn't want the mash and peas the first time round. And secondly, no, you're never going to get around to using them.
Instead, they pile up in the fridge. A container of 4 grams of tuna. A container of a bit of spag bol. A container with two mandarin segments. You become blind to them when you open the fridge.
Chapter skip to a month later where it's now my job to make some room in the fridge. I hate this job almost as much as separating the meat after a shopping trip. I remove about 27 midget containers of unidentified substance in a blanket of mould, and have to try and empty this filth and wash the containers.
Sometimes if no ones' looking I skip the middle man and just throw out the whole container. They're like rabbits anyway, and need to be culled from time to time.
It's all a bit of a lose-lose situation though, because after one of these big clean-outs yesterday, I threw out the left-overs after dinner, thinking 'nope, not going down that turgid path again'. But of course I then just felt guilty. Somebody somewhere would have loved that three spoonfuls of mash. I am an evil wasteful Westerner adding to the worlds' poverty.
What's a guy to do?
7 comments:
What's a guy to do?
Get yourself a pet that eats scraps.
We have chickens. It means in addition to waste handling, we get delicious eggs, fresh from the chicken's bum!
Or a compost heap mate. That takes care of fruit and veg.
As for the 4g of tuna, get a dog. They eat anything in any state and a change fromk their mundane dry biscuits fro brekky is gold to them!!!
I have tears running down my face I'm laughing so hard. I cleared out our fridge on saturday morning. Why why why did I keep all those leftovers?
Found this via Simone. Thanks for the laugh.
We have the same problem happening here. I threw out a few containers of unrecognisable stuff over the weekend. Wish I'd thought to use the compost heap, just not sure whether it's healthy to put mouldy stuff in the mix though?? And you don't want to put it in the compost while it's still edible, right? Someone might be able to eat it sometime....
If you bundled them up and sent them to a starving person somewhere, that might help with your guilt problem.
Sorry Ben. I love left-overs, but now my kids are older we only keep the larger amounts. At least twice a week we have 'left-over' nights.
Rodeo- Yep, I'm pro chooks. Sounds like a win win sitch.
Pedro- Sure dogs eat scraps, but then they produce their own rubbish which is even more disgusting to clean up. It's just postponing the dry wretch for a later date.
Simone- Use your new house as a fresh start. You can change, I believe in you.
Karen- Thanks for stopping by. I have often thought the same thing-- is mouldy compost just going to pollute the soil?
Gordon- Thanks for stopping by as well. It may take away my guilt, but would it get thru customs? It would be deemed toxic waste.
Wendy- But left-over night suggests that there is a good quantity to work with. That is great planning. But the four pasta spirals are another story. That's not going to feed anyone.
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