(This is part of an on-going series Momma’s Soapbox and I are doing on Keeping Our Inner Aloha/Peaceful Life. See here for the Aloha lowdown and here for the Peaceful Life reason!)

Have you ever taken a $50 and run it through the trash compactor?  Or churned it down the drain using the garbage disposal?  How about taking a handful of money and throwing it in your trash can?  No?  Well I have.

Oh, I haven’t literally taken the actual cash-money and done this but listen to this tale.  It is an on-going one in our household.

I decide to clean the freezers out.  I pull out several containers and zippered baggies full of unidentifiable frozen food objects.  I say to Alpha Hubby, “Do you have any idea what this is?”

His response is always, “No. What does it look like?”

Me: *Huff* of frustration.  

“If I knew what it looked like, I could probably figure out what it is,” I say showing, I believe, great patience.

“Well I don’t know what it is.  Why don’t you thaw it out and see?” he says, wisely.

So we do.  We leave all these containers and baggies in the sink or on the counter.  Much later we will come back to take a peek.

I say to Alpha Hubby, “Do you have any idea what this is?”

To which his response is always, “No.  What does it look like?”

Me: MAJOR *HUFF* of frustration.  

“If I knew what it looked like,” I respond very patiently, “then I could figure out what it is.  Why don’t you taste it and see?”

This brave man who used to say he had a cast iron stomach and could eat anything always replies, “I’m not eating that. We don’t even know what it is!”  

At this point the entire conversation spirals downhill pretty quickly.

Does this sound like a merry-go-round conversation to you?  Me, too.  And we have it every time I decide to defrost the freezer.  So all that food always ends up down the garbage disposal or sealed in the baggie and tossed out because we usually can’t figure out what it was.

When this happens I always think that I should mark the container somehow (ya think???).  I should become organized enough to buy those stickers or use one of my millions of Sharpie permanent markers.  I mean, how hard is that?  It’s NOT!

But I never do it.  Somewhere along the line, I failed Suzy Homemaker* 102, the class about organized freezing of foods.  And the one for sewing.  And the one for organized homes.  I am a Suzy Homemaker failure.  Oh, the shame.  My only excuse is that I am a crossroads generation – raised by the 50’s generation that believed in Suzy Homemaker and living in the 70’s that threw Gloria Steinem, NOW, and bra burning in my face!  I didn’t know who I was.

To save myself a lot of frustration and work next time, I’m just going to take the grocery money and throw it on the burn pile.  It will save a lot of time, trouble and merry-go-round conversations!

And you want to know why Momma’s Soapbox and I are starting a bi-weekly blog about being better organized when there are so many blogs about it out there???  We need it. Desperately.

Peaceful Tip:  Invest in a magic marker or Sharpie pen and write down, ON the container or baggie, the name of whatever food is in it.  Write the date, too, so you will know how long it has been in the freezer and then will understand why there is fuzz and green hair growing on the food.  It will make you feel oh so much better organized!

Copyright © 2010 Nan C Loyd
All rights reserved