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Sunday, February 25, 2018

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Organising The Fridge and Freezer.

Recently I have been reading a lot about getting your Fridge or Freezer into some sort of order. None of that chucking stuff in, then scrambling around looking for something. Worse still, is when it is finally cleaned, throwing out  food, that you paid for because it was out of date, or beyond using or just plain yucky!

My small freezer.

I have a small 6 drawer freezer, and a freezer above the fridge and another fridge downstairs with the freezer below the fridge. The downstairs one is great for those bulk items, big lamb roast, garden produce, and sometimes rice or bread flour which I buy in bulk.


Freezer drawer mixed everything.

Normally I clean my drawer freezer every 3 months approximately, it takes that long for the ice to get way too much. Usually on a Friday also, as that is the day I wash, so throwing towels on the floor in front of a defrosting freezer saves a frustrating time of cleaning up the water.


Fridge Freezer

Even though at cleaning time I try to organize, by the time 3 months is up, there is no rhyme or reason to any organisation.

With gift card in hand I headed off down to Kmart and purchased $3 and $4 boxes that fit into the freezer. The drawers are quite little actually but I worked out that one small one will fit in 1 kg of vegetables. Four will also fit into one drawer.


Few for testing

The bigger ones only 2 but they will hold mostly my own frozen vegetables from the garden, or for me to work out exactly how much various styles meat they wil hold.


4 small containers fit neatly plus a bit extra for small things.

Of course you can not look at a freezer without noting the fridge, so out all that came as well,  washed a sorted. For the fridge I purchased glass containers with plastic lids, Plus some small clear plastic holders.

Cleaned out and ready


Fridge door compartments. Looking at holding smoothie fruit/veg.


It is still work in progress, need a few more containers but hopefully this will "smarten" us up and make things manageable. The downstairs will hold the bulk items and the upstairs will be what is in constant use and in the case of garden vegetables can refill containers as needed.


Neat and Tidy and working on it, more containers needed.
Fridge Freezer Test



What have I learnt.? As I don't plan menus, buying anything is rather vague, bit  of meat few veg, whats on special, forgetting bulk garden veg., or actually how much is there. Buying peas for instance in case I have run out.

That maybe having a menu or meal suggestions may help, after 45 years though?
Whether to keep meat in drawer freezer, veg.  little freezer but fruit and icecream needs a spot.

Is there too much frozen veg, so cut down on planting it, or go more vegetarian. Currently we are trialling a no carb. diet, which means more meat lol.
A few decisions to make, but it is a start.

Any hints would be a great help. Till next time.


7 comments:

  1. It looks great now.
    I also use plastic bins to keep things together. I don't like the fridge too full, then I tend to forget what I can't see. :)
    And once a year I clean the underneath of the fridge and vacuum coils. Dust on coils makes the fridge works harder, so it consumes more electricity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I chuckled to myself when I read your post Chris, thinking of the poor girl on the forum who got well and truly lambasted by some of our members over her super-organised fridge and pantry! But it does make a difference to have things in boxes instead of bags of all shapes and sizes. Well done!

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  3. She is what inspired me Gina E and I must say it helps a lot of not having 2 or 3 packets of something thinking you didn't have enough. The empty boxes sit waiting to be filled.

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  4. This is one of those jobs on the to do list over here. We recently moved interstate and instead of diligently recording things as i restocked the freezer I lost motivation about a month in and started chucking stuff in. I found what has worked for me in the past is a laminated inventory table on the front of the freezer and a whiteboard marker so i mark it on as i go. Time to go dig that out I think.
    I love the idea of the labelled baskets/containers in the fridge. I think I need to do something like this as I have so many jars of preserved and pickled goodies in the fridge it can get quite disorganised! Thanks for the inspiration.
    Cheers,
    Laura

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are welcome Laura, I like the idea of a whiteboard also.

      Delete
  5. This is one of those jobs on the to do list over here. We recently moved interstate and instead of diligently recording things as i restocked the freezer I lost motivation about a month in and started chucking stuff in. I found what has worked for me in the past is a laminated inventory table on the front of the freezer and a whiteboard marker so i mark it on as i go. Time to go dig that out I think.
    I love the idea of the labelled baskets/containers in the fridge. I think I need to do something like this as I have so many jars of preserved and pickled goodies in the fridge it can get quite disorganised! Thanks for the inspiration.
    Cheers,
    Laura

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for commenting it really makes my day.