Refrigerator Law
At what point do items left in the fridge become public domain?
Since our fridge has been hard freezing everything lately and we don't have the means (or the desire to clean it out first) to get it fixed, we've learned to live with it. Salad type ingredients must be bought and used the same day, commercial mayonnaise does not mix back to the same consistency it once was after it has frozen and separated, and anything else will have to be defrosted before eating. It's not an ideal situation but it's workable. The problem is, often things get placed in said refrigerator and forgotten about. Or the owner decides it's just too much trouble to reheat. The worst offender of this is my sister. She will buy chips and dip and leave the dip in the fridge. Frozen salsa is salvageable. Frozen french onion dip..not so much. She also habitually places 3 or 4 opened, 20 oz drinks in the fridge when she cleans out her car. This is all fine and good....except that she never retrieves the items, and seemingly forgets about them....unless she sees that someone else has claimed them. Then of course she claims to have wanted said item and was of course saving it for a later date.
So that brings me to my question. In a world where food doesn't spoil quickly, how long should one wait before laying claim to abandoned food?
Since our fridge has been hard freezing everything lately and we don't have the means (or the desire to clean it out first) to get it fixed, we've learned to live with it. Salad type ingredients must be bought and used the same day, commercial mayonnaise does not mix back to the same consistency it once was after it has frozen and separated, and anything else will have to be defrosted before eating. It's not an ideal situation but it's workable. The problem is, often things get placed in said refrigerator and forgotten about. Or the owner decides it's just too much trouble to reheat. The worst offender of this is my sister. She will buy chips and dip and leave the dip in the fridge. Frozen salsa is salvageable. Frozen french onion dip..not so much. She also habitually places 3 or 4 opened, 20 oz drinks in the fridge when she cleans out her car. This is all fine and good....except that she never retrieves the items, and seemingly forgets about them....unless she sees that someone else has claimed them. Then of course she claims to have wanted said item and was of course saving it for a later date.
So that brings me to my question. In a world where food doesn't spoil quickly, how long should one wait before laying claim to abandoned food?