When transitioning towards a minimalist lifestyle, one of the big things I need to clean out is the kitchen. There is nowhere hoarders like me gets to push their hoarding to the limit like in the kitchen. You can stock dry goods, canned goods and lots of base ingredients in there. It is a mess. However, the main enemy, when trying to turn my life around, is the freezer.

Freezers really only have one purpose, save food for later consumption. Stockpile. Hoard. And we don’t really need it. Firstly, once food is in the freezer, it will never leave. I mean, every so often it will, but we save a lot more in there than we could ever use in weeks of cooking. We save leftovers “because you never know when you’ll want some of them.” Yes, I know. Never.

Secondly, buying and eating fresh is so much better. It is healthier to eat fresh fruit and veg and fresh meat; much healthier to make food from scratch. It tastes so much better with fresh ingredients. Rather than dry chewy meat from the freezer, you so want fresh meat with all its tenderness and flavour. Chicken is pumped so full of saline water these days that if you have a less than great freezer, ice crystals will form in the meat, completely drying it out.

I realize some families cannot afford shopping fresh every day. But even if you stockpile dry and canned goods, buy meat, chicken, fruit and veg fresh and notice the difference in flavor and texture. Remember, if you make food from scratch it is much cheaper than buying pre-fabricated, and so much better. Plus, after a while, you can throw out your freezer and have less clutter around the house.