5 Tips On Cleaning, Storing, and Preserving Produce
Do you clean your fruits and veggies?
Pesticides on our produce have the potential to harm our nervous system, endocrine system, and reproductive system. Just rinsing with water isn’t enough. Because pesticides are toxic, they are potentially hazardous to humans, animals, and the environment. This one step each week can lower the toxic load in your home and on your body.
What about organic?
Organic is a better choice, when possible. I still wash organic produce to rid it of dirt and bugs. (Yes, I often find little bugs in salad!) While it would be great to buy all organic produce, that isn’t always possible. If you are not sure which produce is best to buy organic, you can check out the EWGs guide for buying produce here.
Here are my tips on what to use, how to use it, and how to make it part of your routine!
Tip #1: Do you shop on the same day each week? We shop on Sundays. Make it a habit of washing everything before you put it in the fridge. This makes it easy to grab things when you need them and ensures you have clean produce on hand.
Tip #2: How I wash ours! I fill the sink with water, a cap of Thieves Fruit and Veggie wash, and let that sit for 10 min. Then I rinse it very well and let it air dry. You can watch me clean some strawberries here.
Tip #3: Store your fruits and veggies correctly. Some fruits and veggies last longer when stored in a pantry or on the counter. Like potatoes, tomatoes, and apples. Everything doesn’t have to go in the fridge and the cold fridge can also change the taste and texture. For example, tomatoes get mealy when stored in the fridge so I always just place them in my windowsill until we eat them. For a full list of where to store all produce, you can read this article.
Tip #3:
Don’t cut until ready to eat! While I do wash produce when I bring it home from the store, I don’t cut it up until I’m ready to eat it. Once cut you will immediately speed up the ripening process. A few exceptions are carrots and celery for lunches.
Tip #4: Salad hack! Joe found this hack on TikTok (of course, aren’t all the best hack on there?). We buy the best lettuce every week that is grown in a greenhouse in Massachusetts. It’s called Little Leaf Farms, check to see if you have this near you, it’s so good! When we bring this home, we place a damp paper towel in the container with the lettuce and close it back up! This keeps it from getting yucky before we get to eat it all! Nothing worse than throwing out a box of uneaten salad!
Tip #5: Don’t store certain items together unless you want to ripen them quickly! Ethylene gas, a natural gas that some fruits emit, can speed the ripening process of some (but not other) fruits and vegetables. This can sometimes be a good thing. Want to ripen your avocado faster? Store it next to a ripe banana in a paper bag and let the ethylene from the banana do its magic. I keep the bananas on the counter away from our apples though so they don’t go bad too fast!
We use Thieves Fruit & Veggie soak on all our produce! I find that it lasts longer and I can see a huge difference from when I just use water. Here is a little info on this:
Thieves Fruit & Veggie Soak combines natural cleansing ingredients—along with Young Living's signature Thieves, DiGize, and Purification premium essential oil blends—to cleanse your produce gently and thoroughly. This exclusive formula is highly concentrated and makes up to 16 gallons of fruit and veggie wash.
Why we love it!
Safe, natural way to get the dirt and germs off of produce
Formulated with plant-based ingredients for a worry-free soak
Ultra-concentrated formula allows one bottle to make up to 16 gallons of Thieves Fruit & Veggie Soak
Decyl glucoside, citric acid, and sodium citrate work as natural cleansers that gently and thoroughly cleanse and aid in removing dirt and pesticides