Simple tricks to keep your fruits and vegetables fresh without refrigeration

Fruits and vegetables always taste best and healthy when fresh. However, despite having a giant refrigerator, there is always the ‘my fridge is not enough’ problem. While not shopping lots is a good option, we also secretly hate the daily or weekly trips to the supermarket and even worse, forgetting that you bought all your goodies, only to find them languishing lifelessly in your secret drawer days later. 

So, what are the options for storing up all the fruits and vegetables fresh all week long while also not being out of your way?

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These are a few tricks of how to keep your fruits and vegetables fresh even without refrigeration:

1. Many fruits such as avocados, bananas, kiwis, mangoes, pears, plums, and tomatoes, produce a gas called ethylene as they ripen. This gas can prematurely ripen foods that are sensitive to it. So, keep ethylene-producing foods away from ethylene-sensitive foods such as apples, broccoli, carrots, leafy greens, and watermelon in a different place. Also, avoid washing fruits like berries until right before you're ready to eat them. Wetness encourages mold growth.
2. Some vegetables lose their flavour when kept in cold. Keep potatoes, onions, and tomatoes in a cool, dry place, but not in the fridge.
3. Green leaves are known to lose their freshness very quickly. To keep your fresh greenies longer and fresher, store them in bags filled with a little air then seal it tightly.
4. While citrus fruits such as oranges, tangerines, lemons, and limes, last longer than your other fruits you can also prolong their durableness even longer. Keep them in a cool dark place in a perforated plastic bag. This will make them last up to even a week.
5. To keep your pineapples fresh, simply cut the leafy tops of your pineapple off and store your pineapple upside down.  This helps redistribute sugars that sink to the bottom during shipping and also helps it keep longer.
6. To keep your fresh garlic fresh, do no put them in a plastic. Doing this will make your garlic last to even a month or more.

Extra tips: 

-Never buy refrigerated vegetables. Once something has been refrigerated, it needs to stay refrigerated, or it will quickly go bad. Don’t buy too much.  If you buy more than can comfortably fit in your storage areas, you will need extra spacing. This can make your vegetables bruised as put try to fit the extras in. 

-Don’t buy too much.  If you buy more than can comfortably fit in your storage areas, you will need extra spacing. This can make your vegetables bruised as put try to fit the extras in.