I don’t know why, but when my freezer is packed untidily full, I never want to go there. I might have enough meat for two weeks but I don’t want to stray into that amorphous mess so I feel quite uninspired. I don’t have room for precooking meat-centric dishes, which is my favourite way of getting ahead of the game. And I cringe a bit when I gaze at all the little butter boxes of whoknowswhat packed haphazardly on the lower shelves. When I look at that, all I can think is, “I wonder what’s in them,” and “How hard would it have been to ID the lids with a Texta?” Doesn’t help any, but that’s what I think every time I get myself into this pickle.
So when I’m suffering from lazeeitis I know it’s possibly because a few of my organisational necessities have gone awry. I either don’t have the right ingredients in the fridge, which means my shopping plan has failed or—more likely—I have become lazy about packing my freezer and it’s time for an arctic upheaval.
It’s very important to be well organised and I think the easiest way to get, and stay, organised (at least for a while) is to have room. If you’re always expecting an avalanche when you open a door, that’s a door you’re probably not going to be keen to open anytime soon.
So today’s job is to reorganise the freezer. It will probably take about quarter of an hour, which makes me feel terribly ashamed that I’ve been too lazy, or uncaring, to do it until now. But when I’m finished it will be back into order. Cooked dishes on one shelf, raw protein on one, bread-type items all together, frozen vegies corralled somewhere convenient and items like butter, flour and ice-cream (yes, I know, not very healthy) in their designated spots. And today I will also pull out that 2kg packet of mince I froze instead of dividing into small packages because I was short on time. It will be tomorrow’s job to make that into various freezer meals. I’ll be able to do that because I’ll have made some room in the freezer shelf that’s supposed to be only for cooked meals (but has become a landing space for all sorts of other tubs of whoknknowswhat).
I’m really busy with work at the moment. That could be an excuse for not doing this task, but actually it’s more of a reason to get it done. When you’re busy, the shopping, fridge and freezer plan needs to work. I do the shopping and fridge part much better, but my freezer seems to be a bit like John Ralston Saul once described democracy—you get in and tidy up the problem areas, it’s all good for a while, then it gently devolves into a mess. So you get in and clean it up again. Okay, he didn’t describe it exactly like that, but I think that was the gist of the message. That’s what happens with my freezer, anyway.