How often should you clean out your fridge?

Why bother

Spills and old food breed bugs that grow in the cold. A thorough-tier job. Skippable when life's busy, worth it when it isn't.

Why it's a range

A full, busy fridge wants it sooner. A quiet single-person one can wait.

What the job involves

1. Pull everything out and bin anything expired, furred with mold, or that you can't remember buying. Work quick so the food's out under two hours and stays safe.
2. Take out the shelves and drawers and wash them in hot soapy water. Let cold glass come up to room temperature first, or it'll crack the second it meets the hot tap.
3. Wipe the inside walls and the door seals with hot soapy water, then rinse. If you want to be sure, sanitize after with a tablespoon of bleach to a gallon of water.
4. Dry it, put it all back, and check the thermostat reads 40F or below. That's the line that keeps the bacteria slow.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself. Twenty minutes, half an hour, with hot water, dish soap and a cloth. Nobody hires this out, so there's no pro to call and no price to pay. (Cleaning the coils behind the fridge is a different job, around $70 to $130 if a tech does it, but that's not the food clear-out.)

What skipping it costs

$75 to $300 a year, give or take, in food you bought and then threw away once it rotted at the back. The average person bins about $1,300 of food a year, and a household of four runs higher; this is the slice a regular clear-out catches before it spoils, not the whole sorry bill. The other cost doesn't show on a receipt. Listeria grows at fridge temperatures, so a spill from raw meat or dairy left to sit can spread to whatever's next to it. Serious illness from it is rare in any one home, but it's a nasty downside for the sake of a wipe-down.

Signs it's overdue

• A bad, musty or sour smell that meets you when you open the door. That's spoiled food, an old spill, or mold somewhere you haven't looked.
• Sticky shelves, dried drips, or mold on the door seals, the drawers, or the back panel.
• Forgotten leftovers and leaking tubs lurking at the back, and you keep re-buying things you already had hiding behind them.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 3 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 3 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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