cereal
bread
crackers
chips
cookies
all baked products
flour, meal, steel-cut oats
pasta, noodles (after the box is opened)
all condiments
nuts
Basically, I live in a high-humidity environment, alone. So if it can spoil, go rancid, or get bugs, I keep it in the fridge. Sometimes bread is frozen and thawed or toasted as needed. In general, it will go bad before I get to it, if I’m forced to buy normal portions (say, a pack of 8 hamburger buns – I need one, so I’ll refrigerate 3-4 and freeze the rest).
All chocolate is kept in the freezer because I like it better that way.
Pretty much anything that I want to keep bugs out of but doesn’t seal properly. Also I put in anything that doesn’t come with plastic inside the box.
The one that most people think is weird is potatoes. But I’ve determined that, even without the bugs, they last much longer in there. I had one potato that I forgot about left in there for a few months, with nothing noticeably wrong with it. (Although I didn’t eat it, just in case.)
I used to think this but then I travelled to other countries where they never refrigerate it and it doesn’t go bad. Is American mayo less shelf stable than African?
What about your sugar, do you refrigerate that too? It’s got a lot of sugar in it, you know.
I’ve never refrigerated any condiments for as long as I can remember. Exception would be something that has milk in it like ranch dressing.
Even in Bangkok where the kitchen temperature rarely goes below 90 degrees (and in the summer can be well over 100 during the day), all my condiments (including mayo) are left out and don’t spoil. It probably helps that mayo here is sold in bags that you can snip the corner off of and pipe the mayo onto your sandwich (as if you’re piping cake frosting). I’m sure that helps keep it clean.
I have a jug of maple syrup in the fridge but I’m not sure why. Maybe to keep the ants away.
Jam, once opened - in theory, it will last without refrigeration, but sometimes it starts growing mould halfway through the jar, unless kept in the fridge.
Chorizo. It wasn’t refrigerated when I bought it, but if I keep meat products out at room temperature, others in the house will assume they have gone off and throw them away.
My mother used to tell me, “When you get married, don’t start ironing his dress shirts. Send them out.” Good advice.
Is that intentional? Have you found some uses for it? Because if you have, hallelujah! My ship just came in!
My exBF had a jug of maple syrup in the cupboard and I made French toast one day and grabbed that bottle. UGH!! The the surface was covered with a thick layer of mold! So keep refrigerating it unless you go through it rather quickly (I don’t know how quick rather quickly is. He had stuff in his cupboard that was *quite *old. One day a can of tomato sauce burst and leaked over its shelf and the one below.) I keep my maple syrup in the fridge.
I gotta stop reading these threads on conference calls!
My contribution: I keep gummy bears (and any of the other Haribo shapes) in the freezer. Makes them hard, almost like a hard candy, that then softens slooowly in my mouth. They last longer, which is nice and all, but I just kinda like the texture.
Alas, no. I work in a hospital lab and sometimes do urinalysis on my cats (during break). Not that I don’t trust the vet’s lab but I get the results a lot faster. I also do fecals but that goes in formalin so you can leave it out at room temperature.
I hate to tell you what we keep in the refrigerators at work.
I keep the cat food in the fridge simply because that is the only place in the house my cats cannot get to it in order to have an all day, all you can eat feast. One of my cats is so overweight that she’d happily eat all day long, continuously, if I left it out (and despite her heavy body, she’s surprisingly nimble and can still reach (and open) the highest cupboards)…so, into the fridge it goes.
(It’s the cat food in the bag, not the cans)
Thanks for this! I have a local-ish Penzeys that I really enjoy visiting (mmm, smells so good) but never actually noticed the dressing mixes. Another excuse to go.
Visine eye drops. When you’ve got really red, irritated eyes the chilled drops really feel much better. (Do not ingest, though perhaps not for the reason you might think: http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/visine.asp)
I keep empty coke cans and glass bottles in the crisper until I take out the recycling each week. I just have no where else I can store them.
I keep a bag on the bottom shelf that I put plastic trash in. One of my cats eats plastic and he will find it unless it is behind a door he cannot open.