Refridgerator Feng Shui

As a busy single mom and full time employee, I find it hard to clean out my fridge on a weekly basis.  Much of this is procrastination, but a good portion of it comes from my frugal lifestyle of leftovers.
I was raised by some pretty middle class parents that grew up during the depression.  Bacon was a commodity and orange juice was a luxury.  There was always a great deal of thriftiness in our household due to my parents feeding five of us kids and the multiples of friends that meandered in and out of our house at dinner time or after school.  My parents often said, "We just don't throw away food or waste it!".

I learned to cook from scratch, without a microwave.  Our idea of fun food were frozen dinners when my parents had an event or gala to attend.  Aluminum trays of precooked food that match my mom's typical menu, but had the surprise element of the food items wandering into the little comparments of the Tray once you unveiled them after cooking.  Who really wants peas or corn in their apple cobbler? I remember they were called "tv dinners" and often wondered why they had such a name!  We never were allowed to eat in front of the television growing up.  That was just so gauch!  We had a perfectly good dinning room table to eat and and should be grateful to sit and eat at it.

McDonald's was not a mainstay and if we were really lucky we had the opportunity to eat there on family vacations but usually ended up with road trip digestive issues because my parents wanted a sit down meal at a truck stop or a Denny's kind of place.  There was no such thing as a happy meal.  To my parents, a happy meal was when you ate everything on your plate and were grateful for it, no griping!

On the days that my Dad was away from home with the military, my Mom would indulge in a skillet full of liver and onions.  We could smell it cooking long before we stepped foot in the door.  After a few years of listening to us whine and complain about the liver and onions, my Mom would acquiesce and tell us to go make a sandwich. Oh the relief that gave us!

Mom was an excellent middle class cook.  She could cook for officer's dinner parties or feed a mass of teenagers and boy scout troops.  She taught us all to be thankful for our food and especially reminded us that there were children in third world countries that would kill for food like ours even if it meant liver and onions.  I think she was seriously delusional about them killing for liver and onions, but I never spoke that to my Mom.  She taught us how to set the table for family or for formal dinner parties.  She prided herself in having the right dinnerware for each and every event life threw at her.  She taught us to appreciate the value of a wicker paper plate basket and the luxury of paper towels and napkins.  For her it was economy, frugality and efficiency.  We are a far cry from where her generation was.  I don't think my children know how lucky they are to not have to iron dinner napkins after school and fold them just right!

Barbeques were the highlight of summer since we could eat anywhere and as much as our hearts desired.  The promise of desert was only available for a special occasion and ice cream and cake only came on birthdays.  As we all got older the idea of leftovers became a rarity.  My teen brothers would scarf anything even if it was cold.  The idea of a cold meatloaf sandwich still burns in my mind as an adult.  My brothers would eat just about any left over with a good dose of the gourmet sauces of Heinz 57 or ketchup.  My stomach hurts just thinking about scraping the cold grease off of the roof of my mouth from that venture.

So here we are in the year of 2012 and I find that the face of leftovers has changed dramatically.  We rarely have matching Tupperware.  We rarely have anything that is sealed air tight.  Much of it comes wrapped in plastic or zip-loc bags.  If there is reusable plastic it is definitely not labeled and dated.  Well at least not at my house.  Sometimes my most efficient teenager will get fed up and dive in and start pitching left overs out, including my favorite sauces and dressings.  I always come to the rescue of the exotic sauces and promise her they will be used and that they were expensive.  She usually rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head in disbelief.  Now is that anyway to treat your mother knowing where she came from?  Knowing how her upbringing was burned in her brain?  There must be a solution to manage the refrigerator and the current generation of disposables.  Surely there must be help out there somewhere?  There must be a super hero television show on the food channel that approaches this subject? Is there no help for us forty somethings still trapped in our upbringing?

I really think we should have a special kind of service provider in the realms of the science and practice of Feng Shui.  This person ideally would come into our homes on a weekly basis and organize our refrigerators by the principles of Feng Shui. Their soul intention would be to align our life with our food.  Could this be the answer to wiser shopping and spending?  Could this be a better way to look at the food we eat and the junk we keep?  I know there are plenty of concepts to virtually apply to this idea.  So let's take a look at how it might apply.

Let's look at the refrigerator like we would look at deciphering our home in practicing our Feng Shui.   Imagine this diagram was superimposed on the face of the refrigerator as we would open the door.
If this were to be applicable and true, we would hide the wealthy or expensive(Wealth area) goodies in the back left hand corner on the upper shelf or our fridge.  Things like Cambriozola cheeses and other luxury items like bacon and cream cheese. 
Then moving left to right we would place our items that are popular(Fame area) to eat next to them  Things such as diet foods, yummy lunch box items often sought out by our family members.
In the far right corner of the top shelf of our fridge we would then keep items that everyone loved(note Partnership area), goobers peanut butter and jelly mix, Nutella and the coveted Asian food left overs! 
Moving down a shelf, we would want to keep the things that are staples to our family(Family area), the things we want them to eat but might not always be chosen so quickly.  Items such as lunch meat, sandwich fixings and the items that we buy on coupon thinking we want them badly enough but wouldn't possibly purchase them without a coupon!  Heaven knows I didn't really need the lemon flavored mayonnaise that we had a coupon for this past summer! 
The center(Center area) of the second shelf is where all the excitement happens, what we gather around and what makes us feel at home.This would be the comfort foods in our lives.  Items like, scalloped potato left overs and Thanksgiving turkey and gravy. 
Directly to the right of those comfort foods you would find the food(Offspring area) we as adults would never touch with a ten foot pole! Probably because we know what goes straight to our hips and only a teenager can handle simply due to the idea that their metabolism can handle anything, whereas our adult bodies just can't handle it and we know it!  Those would be hot pockets or some kind of microwave fast food filled with additives and preservatives and food coloring!
Finally moving down to the bottom shelves and drawers, the truest form of refrigerator Feng Shui is found!  The stuff we know is good for us.  For knowledge is power(Knowledge area).   What we have learned are the essentials in our diet and in our life to maintain the balance of humanity.  Veggies! Yes! The ever dreaded bag of carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and broccoli.  There I said it.  This is the place our mothers passed down the ultimate in knowledge for eating right.  The common sense of dietary rules!  Realize of course no one family member will visit that part of the fridge without good cause and consciousness.  Really why would they when they have the wealth area or the fame area?
Directly next to the knowledge area of our fridge Feng Shui, we would find the area of career, this is where we keep the I"I am taking this to work tomorrow for lunch!" item.  Unfortunately this is the one area of items that might get neglected since we are often in a hurry and have completely forgotten that the night before we had noble intentions of taking our lunch to work to avoid going out and spending unnecessary money on lunch in a not so healthy place! That tidy plastic container with the healthy leftover Salmon and brown rice! Yep, there it sits to greet you when you arrive home the same day and stare into the abyss of the fridge to ponder what to make for the evening meal while all other family members are either harping and hungry or give you the non-committal response to the eternal question.  You know the question, it is the one that at the end of the day even you don't feel like answering or making a decision over. "What do you feel like for dinner?".  Then the responses vary from "I don't care!" to "I already ate something after school and don't feel hungry right now!". sighing we resort to revisiting the lovely leftovers in the comfort food section of our Feng Shui area of partnership or Offspring.  Comfort food left overs or Asian take out leftovers warmed up!

Finally there is the last section of the Feng Shui fridge...The Helpers section! Hooray for this in our modern time and busy world! This is the area of gallons of milk, orange juice and bagels and flour tortillas to whip up something yummy, something to tide us over till dinner time or keep us out of the Wealth area of luxury foods on the top shelf!

Yes this seems just like my fridge..well in sorts but mostly in the ideal realm of life.  Now to just make sure the foods in the Center area don't gain or grow fuzz or start to change colors! One day at a time and I can conquer this Feng Shui principle to every part of my life!  I just wish someone would do the linen closet for me!