Mold Likes Your Food

Mold likes food just as much as we do, but we do not usually like to find it sharing the same space as the food that we stock our refrigerators with every week or two. While we all lead busy lives and are usually too occupied to remember to clean out our refrigerator, what we do not realize is that mold is also leading a busy life consuming and contaminating our food. It can contaminate almost anything that you put in your refrigerator and most of the time if it does contaminate something, you just have to throw it away. There are some things that you can do to prevent mold from growing in your refrigerator and there are a few items that you can save even if they do get a little moldy.

Keep track of what you have in your refrigerator and how long you have had that same item in there. Make a note of expiration dates. Things like sour cream, jellies, jams, marmalades, and anything else that has high moisture content can become moldy faster than you think and if they do, unfortunately, there is not much that you can do to save these items. Throwing them away and replacing them is about the only thing that you can do.

Those little plastic bags in the produce section of the grocery store sure can be convenient, but once you get your produce back home, you should remove it from these bags. Condensation gets trapped inside the bags and this will cause your fresh fruit and vegetables to rot faster than they normally would if you just put them in the crisper by themselves.

To clean out your refrigerator as regularly as you can remember to is also some good advice. Keeping bacteria and mold spores from building up in the fridge is one of the best ways to prevent mold from growing there. You can use bleach to kill the mold inside your refrigerator, since there is no surface inside that is porous. Bleach will not kill mold growing on porous surfaces. If you have to use bleach, do not mix it with any other chemicals you might have in your kitchen cabinet, especially ammonia. This is dangerous and can produce hazardous fumes.

If a dense item in your refrigerator develops spots of mold on it, such as hard salami or a block of cheese, take a clean knife and cut both around and underneath the moldy spot one inch. Do not touch the knife to other areas of the product and discard the chunk you cut out.

Cleaning Out Your Refrigerator

I love my food, but unfortunately, if I do not remember to keep my refrigerator cleaned out regularly, mold loves my food, too. Often people who have busy lives working and taking care of children cannot remember to clean their refrigerators out as often as they probably need to and since they have more people in the house to feed, there will also be more food. More food in the refrigerator equals more of an opportunity for bacteria and mold to grow. This is not typically a problem as long as someone keeps an inventory of what is in the refrigerator and what needs to be thrown away. You cannot completely keep mold out of your refrigerator because it exists in its spore form in the air that we breathe and unless we are talking about an extremely controlled situation like a hospital clean room, it is truly everywhere. There is not really any escaping it and while mold can grow in your fridge, you can do things to inhibit its growth rate.

Take anything that is outdated and obviously inedible out of your refrigerator and throw it away. Cleaning out everything from the refrigerator and setting it aside to go through later is a good idea when you need to clean out the entire refrigerator and sterilize it. Gather whatever chemicals you might want to use for cleaning the fridge and while this can include bleach, you might want to find another alternative that kills mold and bacteria specifically. If you only have bleach, though, go ahead and use it; just do not mix bleach with any other household chemicals.

Wash all the surfaces in the refrigerator with whatever cleaning solution you have decided on, including the racks in the door and the shelves and drawers inside the main part of the unit itself. Give it a good and thorough scrubbing. This is probably something that you should consider doing between two and three times a year or possibly more, depending on how messy your fridge gets.

When you are done cleaning the inside of the refrigerator (and the outside, if it needs it), it is time to go through what you took out. Take anything that you no longer desire and is no longer edible and throw it away. If any jars have any sticky residue on the bottoms of them, wash these off with a warm rag so you don’t get sticky grape jelly or whatever it is back on the surface of your clean fridge.

Cleaning Out the Fridge to Prevent Mold

With the obsession that many households in the United States have with food, one would think that we would remember to keep our refrigerators cleaned a lot more often than we do. Many of us have families to take care of and jobs to tend so, so maybe it is because we just do not have time to take care of this necessary chore like we used to or perhaps we think that the problem is not as bad as we are supposed to think it is. Most people realize that bacteria and mold can grow in the refrigerator almost as easily as outside it because of the large amount of food we keep inside it and a lot of the time our food is improperly stored, which opens it to contamination even further than normal. To keep a healthy kitchen, you need to clean out your refrigerator often; clean it out completely at least once every three or four months and here is how you can start.

Remove everything from the fridge, including from the doors, and set it aside wherever you are comfortable with leaving it. The best place is on the kitchen or dining room table or just your kitchen counters. If you do not have room, set things on a table somewhere, as leaving them in the floor is not exactly practical, especially if your floor is not clean.

Take every removable part of your fridge out and set them in a sink of hot water. If you are putting glass shelves in it, rinse them with warm water first to make sure the sudden temperature change does not crack the glass. This water should also contain plenty of antibacterial soap. Allow these to soak a few minutes, especially if they have any sticky residue like from jelly or syrup.

Start washing out the inside of the refrigerator with a rag or a sponge. Use a warm bowl of water and a spray bottle of whatever chemical you have chosen for this job. You can use bleach, but do not mix it with other household chemicals that you might have on hand and always wear rubber gloves. Make sure to get any food that is stuck onto the surface of the refrigerator off before you start putting things back.

When you are done cleaning the inside and done washing the removable shelves and racks, start putting them back. Then, go through the items that you took out and throw out anything that is stale, spoiled, or contaminated with mold.