Fridge Cleaning Time

Well, after weeks of rainy days--almost Seattle like, down here bucolic Joshua, TX--I've run out of things to do in the house. Laundry? Done and redone. Vacuum? Done and redone and will get redone again if the damned border collies, playing in the mud under the house get in here again! Bathroom? Scrubbed and rescrubbed. What was left? Oh, yeah, the fridge. Did it last on the day I came home from Peru about 3 months ago. How bad could it be?
      Well, the sacred medicines were fine. Most of the cheeses were fine. But those five nearly-full containers of sour cream? They'd turned into a science experiment. That stick of butter I lost last month? Found it. Somehow worked its way into the organic strawberries I forgot about and the mold took over everything. And while I've been buying zucchini and yellow squash twice a week, turns out there were a few that were lost in the veggie drawers that were turning into a puddle of goop.
     Nothing appeared to have opened, yet there was some dried, sticky brown stuff on the back wall of the fridge--I mean, probably 4 ounces of sticky stuff, which probably came from a quart of something that someone spilled and decided not to tell me about.
     It's all clean now, and I've thrown out enough garbage to fill an entire kitchen bag. Who knew the jar of sauerkraut was empty, or that there were three open jars of dill pickle spears or 7 mustards in the back?
     So I'm taking a break, assessing it all, tossing what needs tossing, having a glass of wine to get through it, and I swear, just like I've done for the last 45 years since I've been on my own, that I'm never gonna let that fridge happen again. Only this time I mean it.