Sherry’s Home Update: Fridge and Freezer Minimalist Look Into It
If you are interested – I have the rest of my home here under this tag – Sherry’s Home
Here is my updated picture of my fridge and freezer at the END of a the week (usually a Friday, or Saturday morning).
This is the fridge door:
We bought extra fridge separators as you can see, for about $5 each from the manufacturer because I was getting sick of plastic lids falling down and being used in lieu of actual separators.
This is where I think, I separate myself from the truly frugal folk — most of them would just suck it up, get annoyed each time the lid falls when you move a bottle, and just not bother with anything because they don’t want to spend the money.
I see it as a constant annoyance, as well as noise pollution, so we paid $60 and I am VERY HAPPY with all of the extra shelf separators in the fridge.
/end of rant
Moving on —
We have butter up top, some yeast, some cheese in that little box, milk in the first shelf (that’s fish sauce on the far left), with seltzer water.
The second shelf is yoghurt, Little Bun’s goat milk, and his Life Factory glass bottles. He still enjoys them.
All of our milk bottles are glass and reusable – we return them for $2 each when we go to get more milk. We switched over 8 years ago and have never looked back. We must have saved quite a lot in plastic and carton waste, and the only part that is wasteful is the plastic cap and the little security tab we rip off when we open the bottle – but this is a low amount of plastic from what we had before.
Our main fridge area at the end of the week is empty. There is no food waste here.
More cheese on the bottom shelf, there is some pastry roll ready for a cake my partner was baking for a little treat, and pasta in a bowl that Little Bun eats for breakfast when he is peckish.
We do not buy more than we need, we plan all of our meals, and food waste is not a thing here.
Lastly, the freezer:
We have frozen soups and stews that we thaw weekly to feed Little Bun, ice packs, and the very bottom is the result of my partner’s hard work from 50lbs of farm picked tomatoes that he peeled, removed the insides of, and cooked down into a thick tomato paste to be used for pizzas, beans and other tomato-based dishes.
We do not buy tomato paste.
Other notes:
We have no condiments except for fish sauce, and soy sauce – I am the only one who will use it on occasion – this means no ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard… we don’t eat those things so we don’t store them.
We don’t buy one-use condiments either, and aren’t into storing these things because … we don’t need them in the meals we eat.
This is why I eat out often as well – sometimes I have a craving for one bowl of red Thai curry, and I am not going to make a huge pot of it even if it is cheaper for 2 reasons: (1) My partner is very sensitive to smells and curry would basically ruin all of the nice French cheeses he has stored in the fridge, and (2) I am the only one who eats them, so I’d likely break out in acne
We do have spices – turmeric, paprika, etc… and use them.
He also meal plans really well, and each week I’ve learned just to take his base meal, and supplement with vegetables I feel like eating that are in season, like beets, etc.
It works out well and we have been eating vegan/vegetarian a lot more often which has made me feel a lot better physically as well.
That is not to say we are against meat — we are not. We just eat far less of it, and gradually have been decreasing down to about 1-2 meals a week, and only for special occasions.
I feel like this is the right approach for our health and bodies, and it has also saved some money in the sense that we can now buy much higher quality ingredients of everything else without meat in the budget. Just the other day, I picked up 2 boxes of raspberries for $6 and we ate them all happily. I normally would have balked at $6 in the past, but now… *shrug*
What does your fridge look like? Do you meal plan?
20 Comments
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Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
Thanks! Food waste is our #1… not only is it bad for the environment, it is also just a waste of money. My parents have the opposite fridge – so full of food, and then it all rots.
It isn’t a moral stance we are taking as well.. we just don’t eat ketchup, mustard or mayo.. so that sort of cuts all those out. Then any other extra things like chilli and spices, I have, and I use up, then I think about if I want to buy it again because it takes specific meals to eat it (e.g. fish sauce)… I honestly don’t miss any of it. I’ll enjoy it when I am eating out but I don’t crave it.
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Angelique Robinson
Hi, I love to see how other people live. I’ve learned so much by being curious and open to all possibilities. My fridge is either full or empty. Either way, as long as I have coffee and half&half, I’ll figure it out.
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Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
We try not to have food rotting in there. We buy lots of fresh produce and fruit (not shown or kept in the fridge), but we make sure it all gets eaten.
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Steveark
Just curious, in the event of a major supply chain disruption how long can you feed your family with only what’s inside your residence? We could always go several months, longer by supplementing with fresh game and fish we could catch. With our water filtration gear we would never run short of that either. We aren’t survivalists, just rural people with very average stores of food. I feel like city dwellers have much lower stored food on hand and a much higher chance of needing it.
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Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
About a year. We did a count when the lockdown happened and we estimated we’d be fine for a year with no fresh produce, just subsistence living on pasta, flour to make food, etc. We would likely be malnourished, maybe even develop some issues (scurvy?) but we would be alive.
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Ella
Aside from the nifty dividers, your fridge is my own personal hell.
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Crunchy
Thank you for your posts! I always enjoy reading them 💙 i love that your minimalist and eco conscious! As for negative people, ignore them, you should be proud that you’re not a sheep
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Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
Thank you. We try. We aren’t perfect and it kills me but we are doing much better than before.
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Elly
It kills you that you’re not perfect? Tough way to live.
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Gemi
No offense but y’all sound like a WERID family.
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Susan Tan
woah that is offensive!
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Anne
A Frenchman without Dijon mustard!?!? Not even moutarde à l’ancienne?
We basically always have a jar of capers, Dijon mustard and soy sauce in the fridge, as well as hard cheese and butter for my husbands breakfast and oat milk for mine. We have a small fridge and usually shop just what we need on our way home from work. But during the pandemic, we’ve meal planned for a whole week. We eat mostly vegetarian food, so we’ve still managed quite well without a big fridge.
In the freezer we always have sliced bread for my husbands breakfast and berries for mine. At the moment, also my woollen scarfs and sweaters. I always freeze them just in case before storing them for summer. -
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Hawaii Planner
Our fridge looks nothing like that, mostly because we buy so much produce. (And, eat it all. Very minimal food waste here). We went shopping yesterday, but before that, we had carryover vegetables from the shopping trip the week before. We eat the most fragile food first (raspberries, strawberries, bananas, etc), but likely have cabbage, carrots, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes.
We have a salad every night with dinner, and it typically has 6-8 type of veggies. We also keep 6 or so type of fruit on hand at any given time.
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Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.
We buy a lot of produce too. We don’t keep it in the fridge… especially things like tomatoes.
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Christine
Omg I think your fridge is GOALS. I’m crazy about food waste, we’re pretty good but have so many condiments it drives me bananas. I end up eating the weirdest combination of foods just to get rid of jars. Then my husband will buy 5 more (he is NOT concerned about food waste 😑). I feel such a sense of accomplishment when the fridge is cleared out!