A disorganized fridge can, at once, become a big problem. A messy fridge can undoubtedly threaten your health and budget, from forgotten leftovers to missing ingredients. The really good news is that you can easily fend off these troubles by using these simple organizational strategies. Keeping your fridge organized makes the most of your available space and keeps everything fresh and ready to eat.
Clean and Sort
The first step to organizing a fridge is cleaning and sorting all your items. Get everything out of the refrigerator, checking for expiration dates, mold, or other signs of spoiled food as you go. Take out anything that is past the expiration date or looks filthy. For leftovers or food in plastic storage containers, if you’re not absolutely sure how long it has been in there, throw it out. In the matter of your food, it’s preferable to err on the side of caution.
With everything out of the fridge, take the time to clean its interiors fully. Wash and dry all surfaces, including inside drawers and bins, using hot, soapy water or a mild bleach solution. With this process, you will get started with a clean fridge for your new organization system.
Label Everything
The next step to an organized fridge is to keep an inventory of how long your food has been there. While, indeed, numerous pre-packaged foods will come with an expiration or sell-by date on them, for fruits and veggies or food that you bring home or that is leftover from meals, you’ll entail to have a system to keep track of when it was added to the fridge and when it will need to be thrown out.
One useful instruction is to use a dry-erase marker to write the dates of meals and takeout on the container. You could work on the same thing for other perishables inside of your fridge. By noting both when you brought them home and when they need to be used, you can be certain that you are using up the groceries you buy before they spoil and avoid eating leftovers that can make you sick.
Use Containers
Keeping loose items tidy in a fridge, particularly fruits, vegetables, and even small condiment jars, can be tricky. Look into using clear storage bins to group loose items together to prevent clutter and making sure you have everything you’re in need of. Over and above that, think of shopping for quality reusable food storage containers with tight-fitting lids. This can help you store food safely and reduce waste by reusing your containers often.
You can especially use a dry-erase marker on the bins and storage containers to keep track of the date things were bought. Using bins and storage containers in your fridge will free up space for more oversized items elsewhere and make tracking the expiration dates of time-sensitive goods so much simpler.
Develop a System
As you get cracking with replacing items, it’s very important to develop a system for storing everything. This has two benefits: first, you will constantly know where things are, and second, it can make your food last longer and be safer. For a case in point, always remember that particular items should naturally be kept in certain places.
Meat should constantly be kept on the lowest shelf to avoid dripping and contaminating other food. Besides that, never store milk in the fridge door – it can spoil in a flash when exposed to warm air quite frequently. You can additionally separate your fruits and vegetables and use trays for very messy items to prevent spills.
Plan Ahead
In the case when your fridge is clean and organized, the basic thing you can do is plan to keep it that way. Even the most organized fridge will need to be totally cleaned up, and old items are thrown out a few times. Ponder on creating a cleaning schedule to be certain that your fridge stays organized. As an example, you could settle upon a day of the week or month to go through everything, rotating and updating your fresh produce and wiping down fridge surfaces. By fulfilling this at scheduled times, you can avoid the dreaded deep-clean and purge of your fridge (and freezer), a job very few take delight in.
By minding and applying these easy ideas, you can keep your fridge clean and organized week after week with less effort than you thought possible!
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Originally Published on Nov 12, 2021
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