Before electricity, keeping things cold was a challenge. Folks would cut ice out of a lake in the winter and bury it in straw to insulate it, in hopes of keeping it a bit longer. A cold cellar was common — usually, a glorified hole in the ground. If they were lucky enough to live by a cold, running stream, a cellar was sometimes built over it. Or things were just put in the stream to keep cold.

The Damsel fondly remembers eating watermelon chilled in a stream, but although she’s very old, she’s never experienced being without a refrigerator for any length of time. Grandma would be purely amazed at the spacious “iceboxes” we now have. It’s pretty much taken for granted that everyone has one of these nifty gadgets that, for the most part, just work 24/7 without us having to worry or fuss. The main concern is keeping it clean and organized.

These beauties are big enough that we actually LOSE stuff in them. Items can get buried, overlooked, or left to grow hairs until they are unrecognizable. Folks stand in front of them with the door open, gazing in at the bounty of food, while the nice cold air streams out.

Here’s one possible solution:

Write a list of what’s inside, directly on the fridge itself, with a dry erase marker. The Damsel admits she felt weird doing this. She has a strong compulsion against writing on walls. But after taking a deep breath, she managed to do the deed.

She’s not convinced she’ll do this forever, but it cost nothing to try. Time will tell what the compliance level will be at the Cottage, because in order for this to work the best, everyone has to erase the items they take out and consume, and write down the things they buy and put in.

And, it’s not guaranteed to stop fridge-gazing, since sometimes we do that because we don’t know what we want to eat, not because we don’t know what’s in there.

What do you think? Good idea or bad?

Edit: after a week, the Damsel has discovered that some dry-erase markers come off much better than others. Test in an inconspicuous spot before you do something you might regret–like mess up the front of your pretty fridge.

But before the lesson, here’s another idea to consider. It’s called “No-Linen-Closetology”, from the book  It’s Here…Somewhere by Alice Fulton and Pauline Hatch. This mind-bending idea is to have just two sets of sheets for any bed in your house. One set is on the bed, the other is stored flat in between the mattress and box springs. The plan is, you wash your sheets and then put them right back on your bed. The stored set is for emergencies. Thus, you need no linen closet. Extra blankets and pillows will need a home somewhere else, in storage boxes under the bed or another likely place.

Before you start hatin’ on this, think about what a whole extra closet could do for your home organization. It’s just an idea…give it some thought.

Now then. Folding those pesky fitted sheets.

The Damsel enlisted a sprog to help with these pictures because there was just no way.

Hold the sheet lengthwise with a hand in each fitted corner.

Slip one fitted corner over the other.

Lay this down carefully, and do the same with the other two corners.

Now pick them up, two nested corners in each hand, looking to see that the sheet hanging between isn’t twisted. Slip one hand over the other, so that now all four corners are nested inside each other.

Lay the sheet on a flat surface, the four corners at the upper left. The corners will make the top and left edges lap over the main part of the sheet. Slide your left hand up into the four corners to make it square, and flatten and straighten the whole thing into a rectangle.

Now fold the top edge down a third, and then a third again,

Making a nice flat rectangle.

Fold one more time.

And you’re done! This sweet little bundle will take up a lot less space than the rolled-up-in-a-ball way.

Extra credit: Some people like to put both the top and fitted sheets inside one of the pillowcases for that bed, making a neat little packet that keeps everything together. (Put any other pillowcases for that bed inside too.)

Bonus points: There are a couple of good YouTube videos showing this method if the still pictures aren’t clear for you. Here’s one: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5k9nWcuFc]