Maintaining an organized refrigerator and freezer might be one of the hardest spaces in a home. It’s constantly changing since food is always coming and going. However, it’s essential to reducing food waste and staying on budget! That’s why I do my best to keep our refrigerator organized on a regular basis.
This is the 3rd post in a 4 part series all about simplifying, decluttering, and organizing your kitchen. The 4 part series, called Your Simply Organized Kitchen, will discuss how to maintain clutter-free countertops, the steps to maintaining a simple and organized pantry, how to simplify your kitchen cabinets, and how to setup an organized refrigerator and freezer.
I love opening my refrigerator to see a clean and organized space! However, this doesn’t always happen. It tends to be the space in my home that becomes disorganized the quickest. It’s frustrating and overwhelming at times.
But there are 5 things I try to do now that have really helped me maintain a (mostly) organized refrigerator and freezer on a regular basis.
5 Tips for Maintaining an Organized Refrigerator
1. Clean It Weekly
Take time each week before you go to the grocery store to clean out your refrigerator. This isn’t a super thorough clean where you remove everything and wipe down all the shelves, walls and crevices. Just remove anything that is going bad, take a quick mental inventory of what you need to use up soon, and then meal plan around those items. This shouldn’t take more than 5-7 minutes.
2. Don’t Over-Organize
Your refrigerator is much like your pantry with a constant turnover of items. If you’re anything like my family, you likely have several items that you buy each week. However, you might also have items that are only occasional purchases. If you over organized the space with bins and labels you won’t have any flexibility. This will cause a lot of frustration. Instead…
3. Create Zones
Have a specific shelf or spot for different types of items. For example, our gallon of milk we are currently using always goes in the left hand door on the second to bottom shelf. Our coffee creamers go in the right hand door on the second to bottom shelf. Jelly can always be found on the Lazy Susan and yogurt cups belong in the bottom drawer. My family knows where to find things they are looking for because they live in their zones.
4. Create a Leftover Station
We love leftovers in our home! So much so that I actually always cook extra so we can eat the same meal for lunch the following day. If you love leftovers as much as we do, make sure to create a leftover station in your refrigerator.
It’s not nearly as glorious as it sounds…trust me! Ours is just the right side of the top shelf of our refrigerator. If we have leftovers, that’s where they can always be found. This helps everyone to see what’s available at all times ensuring that the leftovers get used as often as possible.
5. Don’t Overstuff Your Refrigerator
Air needs to be able to circulate around foods for them to stay fresh longer. If you are trying to pack too much into your fridge, then you might be causing more harm than good. It isn’t saving money if you buy 10 packs of strawberries on sale but they are all going bad before you can eat them.
Purchase the amount of food your family can realistic eat before your next grocery trip. If your refrigerator is overflowing when you come home each trip, you might need to consider going more often and shopping for less food at each time.
Now, let’s take a quick peek inside my refrigerator and freezer!
A Tour of My Organized Refrigerator and Freezer
We have a french door LG refrigerator with a pull-out freezer drawer.
This is what the inside of our refrigerator looks like on a fairly regular basis.
The left door holds baking chips, random condiments, the two milk gallons we currently have open, and an extra butter or dairy products.
The left door has a closed container where I store the stick butter we are currently using as well as any Crisco if we have it on hand. The next shelf holds salad and sandwich condiments. The third shelf holds our coffee creamers, and the bottom shelf holds any juice boxes we have on hand for school lunches.
Here is a view of the left side of our refrigerator. We usually have more fruit than fits in our fruit drawer so overflow fruit is stored on the top shelf. The middle shelf has a lazy Susan where we store things like jelly, pickles, and sour cream. The bottom drawer is mainly dairy items. We store our eggs, butter, and tubs of yogurt on this shelf.
On the right side, you will find our leftovers on the top shelf. We try to always store our leftovers on this shelf so they can be eaten regularly. I also keep any hummus or salsa on this shelf if we have it on hand.
The second shelf has a basket where we store our meat and cheese products. The bottom shelf holds our extra gallons of milk (we go through about 4 gallons each week) and any tea or juice we have made to drink.
In our meat and cheese basket you will find anything from lunch meat to bacon as well as shredded and sliced cheese or cheese sticks for snacks/lunches.
The two deeper drawers on the bottom of the refrigerator hold are used for produce. The left side always holds our fruit and the right always holds vegetables.
The very bottom drawer is for yogurt. Yes, we have a lot! We usually buy this in bulk from Sams Club since we all eat yogurt daily.
Here is a quick snapshot of the inside of our freezer.
The top drawer is where our ice maker is stored. We also have flour and yeast on this shelf as well as ice packs for lunches and a bandage wrap for sore muscles. This is also the space where we keep any frozen sweet treats like popsicles or ice cream if we have it on hand.
The bottom drawer has a divider down the middle. I store any frozen fruit or vegetable on the left and all meat items are stored on the right. It’s simple, but keeps the space fairly organized and I can always find what I’m looking for.
So that’s just a quick tour of our organized refrigerator and freezer space. It’s not glamorous because it’s constantly changing. We try to rotate our food as best as possible so that little goes to waste.