I love my food, but unfortunately, if I do not remember to keep my refrigerator cleaned out regularly, mold loves my food, too. Often people who have busy lives working and taking care of children cannot remember to clean their refrigerators out as often as they probably need to and since they have more people in the house to feed, there will also be more food.
More food in the refrigerator equals more of an opportunity for bacteria and mold to grow. This is not typically a problem as long as someone keeps an inventory of what is in the refrigerator and what needs to be thrown away.
You cannot completely keep mold out of your refrigerator because it exists in its spore form in the air that we breathe and unless we are talking about an extremely controlled situation like a hospital clean room, it is truly everywhere. There is not really any escaping it and while mold can grow in your fridge, you can do things to inhibit its growth rate.
Take anything that is outdated and obviously inedible out of your refrigerator and throw it away. Cleaning out everything from the refrigerator and setting it aside to go through later is a good idea when you need to clean out the entire refrigerator and sterilize it.
Gather whatever chemicals you might want to use for cleaning the fridge and while this can include bleach, you might want to find another alternative that kills mold and bacteria specifically. If you only have bleach, though, go ahead and use it; just do not mix bleach with any other household chemicals.
Wash all the surfaces in the refrigerator with whatever cleaning solution you have decided on, including the racks in the door and the shelves and drawers inside the main part of the unit itself. Give it a good and thorough scrubbing. This is probably something that you should consider doing between two and three times a year or possibly more, depending on how messy your fridge gets.
When you are done cleaning the inside of the refrigerator (and the outside, if it needs it), it is time to go through what you took out. Take anything that you no longer desire and is no longer edible and throw it away. If any jars have any sticky residue on the bottoms of them, wash these off with a warm rag so you don’t get sticky grape jelly or whatever it is back on the surface of your clean fridge
