Spring Cleaning: Organizing the Pantry and Fridge

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When you become more conscious of what you eat, you start to take stock of not only what comes into your home but also what goes out of it.

Cleaning the Pantry and Kitchen

Passover is almost upon us. In a couple of days, we will turn over our kitchens to prepare for the Passover Seders and the week that follows. Up until that time, the most defining moment of this week will be the spring cleaning. Many rooms require a thorough cleaning. But in the kitchen, the pantry, food storage cabinets and refrigerator require special attention.

Which Foods Should You Check?

Of the items that you might otherwise sell along with your chametz, many can be discarded. What are some of the items that should be pitched?

  • COOKING OILS Cooking oils that have gone rancid. Cooking oils are sensitive to light, heat and air. They do not last forever. if you've got cooking oils sitting in your pantry or kitchen for over a year, you might want to check if they've gone rancid. This chart tells you how to spot a rancid cooking oil.

  • SEEDS Bags of sesame seeds and other packaged seeds that have gone rancid. Sesame seeds last 3-6 months, on average, in the pantry and up to a year in the refrigerator. You will know when they've gone rancid.

  • FLOURS Old flours that have gone rancid. In particular, if the flour is whole wheat, or most any other whole grain, it does not last nearly as long as white flour.

  • SPICES Stale spices that are several years old. Ground spices lose flavor and potency very quickly, in as little as 3 months. Generally, whole spices last much longer than ground spices or spice mixes. So get rid of those old Passover spices from 3 years ago!

  • TEA BAGS Boxes of old tea bags that taste wooden and flat. I found some organic teabags from 2015. They smelled like cardboard.

  • REFRIGERATED CONDIMENTS Jars that have sat in the back of the fridge since last Passover (maybe longer!) must be discarded. These include ketchup, mustard and oils that must be refrigerated (such as fish oil, sesame oil, hempseed oil and flaxseed oil). In our fridge, we found some moldy sourdough starters and a jar of fermented fruit that we forgot about.

Glass Jars

In general, if your home has undergone successive periods of high summer heat, especially in the kitchen and pantry, it might be time to discard a lot of these stock items.

Does It Bring You Joy?

In a sense, cleaning your pantry and fridge for Pesach is an exercise in the KonMari method: If the food no longer brings you joy (it has expired, it has no more volatile oils or you are just sick of waiting for the perfect time to use it) – out it goes. Even the spice rack can be heavily thinned out. Additional, if the item has been in your fridge for a year already, then it really serves no purpose. My suggestion is to throw out the contents and recycle the jar (or reuse the jar after Passover).

My Experience Cleaning for Passover

In doing this exercise myself, I discovered:

  • A container of bay leaves that traveled from my old apartment to my current address (in 2015!)

  • A container of ground cinnamon that we purchased for Passover in 2017

  • A jar of sesame seeds that sat in my pantry for two years, where it weathered numerous extreme heat waves that rendered it beyond rancid

  • Several still-sealed packages of shredded coconut from last year’s Pesach shopping; these might still be usable

  • A few old sourdough starters that have gone moldy in the fridge

I am sure that you will discover similar outcomes in and around your kitchen.

Onward, budding consciously kosher experts!