Lemonade Out Of (Moldy) Lemons

Perhaps some of you wonder whether or not I clean out my fridge anymore. After all, there haven't been any posts featuring long-expired leftovers in a long time.  I'll tell you the truth: for a while there, I just gave up. Occasionally Larry, in a fit of desperation, would rummage through the fridge and get rid of things that looked suspect, but on the whole things have been left to run amok, as it were.

Never again...

But all that has changed, people. No longer do I have items sitting in my refrigerator for months; no longer is the entire back third of that particular appliance given over to what we euphemistically referred to as "science experiments." No, a new day has dawned in The More, The Messier household, an era of good feeling, if you will - and it only costs me $25 a month.

You see, someone tipped me off that there was a new composting service in town - that is, for a monthly fee, this company would pick up all of my organic-matter refuse and turn it into dirt. The company then distributes bags of this dirt to community gardens (oh, and 2 bags a year to its customers).

Icing on the cake - the company was started by a returned Iraq War veteran, and it makes a point of hiring other veterans.

So I took the plunge and signed up, whereupon I was rewarded with a 7-gallon heavy-duty plastic bin to stick all our organic refuse into - everything left on our plates, plus paper towels, chicken bones, you name it. Pickup is on Fridays, when they take the full bin and leave me a clean empty one. For $300 a year, I can pride myself on doing my part for the environment AND helping veterans find jobs; but, truthfully, for me that's not even the best part.

My new best buddy

The best part is, every single Thursday I feel GREAT as I go through our refrigerator, because everything I toss will be transformed into dirt and donated to community gardens.  I am part of the circle of life, people - me and my wasteful food habits. That's right, no more guilt over wasted food, no more self-flagellation over good intentions left to rot in our vegetable crispers, NO MORE REGRETS.

True, this still doesn't solve my condiment overload issues, judging from the number of little jars and bottles that persist in crowding my fridge. But those spiffy refrigerator bins I bought last year in Costco do seem to be helping to prevent a repeat of the vinaigrette fiasco of 2009, so that was money well spent, also. I'm sure Larry appreciates my spending all his hard-earned cash to solve problems caused by my domestic incompetence. But maybe he is used to that by now...