A TikTok with 11 million views has captured a familiar saga for many families during holiday homecomings: the annual refrigerator purge.
"Anyone else's mom hoard stuff from 10 years ago?" the TikToker Alanna Barron, 24, asked in the caption of her video, which shows a skirmish in the kitchen as her outnumbered mom desperately tries to stop the clean-out.
"Have you died yet? No," she says, countering that the items are fine to eat, as Barron's twin brother Tyler, sister-in-law, and father insist they're "not healthy."
Barron, a 24-year-old marketing director based in Los Angeles, told Business Insider she and Tyler "tend to go through my parents' fridge around Thanksgiving/Christmas each year, but we've missed the past couple of years."
@alannabarron Anyone else’s mom hoard stuff from 10 years ago? #momsoftiktok #thanksgiving #holiday #refrigerator
♬ original sound - Alanna Barron
On TikTok, she showed various sauces and jars being tossed, including sesame oil from 2015 (the oldest item in the fridge), sriracha from 2018 (which some users mourned given current shortages), "chunky" clam juice, and blue cheese-stuffed olives dating back to 2022.
"It changed colors," Barron's father says of one of the jars over his wife's protests. "You have to stop."
All in all, Barron told BI nearly two dozen items were trashed.
Commenters on both sides of the saga could relate. "And the trash bag be weighing 200 pounds after," one viewer echoed. "Found a Jello box in my grandmas pantry from 1966!" another viewer added. "Which means she packed it and moved it to 5 different houses over the last 60 years."
Some TikTokers stitched videos showcasing the food they'd been hoarding for more than a decade, including 16-year-old and 35-year-old cheeses.
Others questioned how regularly the Barrons were conducting the purges given the items dated back so many years. "Some years you can only get so far before they completely freak out," one commenter surmised.
At the end of the day, Barron said her mom "didn't even notice I was videotaping" but had been a good sport about going so massively viral for such a relatable dispute.
"My mom thinks it's hilarious," she said.