We have been reading that the price of beef in the grocery store is going to go up. So, Mike and I talked about it and we decided we would purchase a half of a beef. For those unfamiliar with purchasing like that, basically, we have bought half the meat of a processed steer. Doing this provides a large quantity of meat, which includes steaks, roasts, ground beef, and other cuts. It offers cost savings and high-quality meat but requires significant freezer space. Like many farm families, we have chest freezers in addition to the freezer at the bottom of our kitchen fridge. Since Mike makes sausage and sells it, we have more than one chest freezer.
Having all that freezer space means that sometimes when I order groceries, if I notice that chicken is on sale or something like that, I will buy more than we might eat in a couple of meals and freeze the rest for later. When Mike grew a big garden, I also froze some vegetables for us to eat later. Plus, like most everybody, we often buy frozen goods at the grocery store. All of this - Mike making and storing the sausage, buying frozen foodstuffs, and preserving vegetables is great and cost effective but also means we need to keep a good inventory. That is something that neither of us is really good at. We start off with the best intentions but then get in a hurry for one reason or another and our intentions slip off the track and the train gets away from us.
So, our freezers need a good cleanout before the half-a-beef gets here. It is a job that should already have claimed our attention and efforts but just got pushed down on the To-Do List. Today was the day. I decided I would begin the great freezer cleanout.
I found frozen squash that was dated from the summer of 2017. I found a frozen pizza labeled best before August 15, 2020. I found a frozen topping container labeled vegetable soup from 2022. I found a lot of outdated and forgotten items. Thus, my dreaded job was certainly bringing to fruition why I had been dreading it and putting it off.
I was perturbed that we had wasted so much food. I was frustrated that I had not kept a better inventory. I was aggravated with having to dig around and read all the labels on items. Yet, the entire process of cleaning out one of the chest freezers in the basement took a grand total of twenty-five minutes. That short timeframe included standing bent over with my head and arms digging around in the bottom of the chest freezer, bagging the outdated foodstuffs, and trekking out to the trash barrel with the garbage bag.
The frustration with myself for not doing a better job also served to encourage me to try to do a better job of keeping an inventory of what we do have. I've already started a spreadsheet listing of items in the freezer. I can print a copy off and we can keep a tally of what goes in and what we take out of each freezer. Have I mentioned before that I REALLY like digital accessibility? I'm trying to figure out what the simplest way will be to keep the inventory list accurate and up-to-date!
I'm also trying to remember that I should just tackle a job and not keep putting it off with dread...
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